Royal photographer Patrick Lichfield has died of a stroke at the age of 66.
Lichfield, a first cousin of the Queen, was unwell yesterday and taken to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, before passing away at 4am.
Born in 1939 and educated at Harrow, he started his photography career at a photographic studio, before working at Life magazine in the 1960s. He was subsequently given a five-year contract with American Vogue.
Lichfield is probably best known for photographs of royalty, particularly his role as official photographer at the wedding of Charles and Diana in 1981. However in a career spanning four decades, his subjects included: Mick Jagger, Roman Polanski and David Hockney.
An advocate of digital photography, in recent years he had worked with Olympus and Epson on a retrospective of his pictures at the National Portrait Gallery, including ?Swinging London? a group portrait of some of the most famous faces in 1960?s London, and a naked photograph of Marsha Hunt for the musical Hair.