Reginald Davis
Photographer who had warm relations with the Royal family, but not with Princess Grace of Monaco
REGINALD DAVIS, who has died aged 93, forged a reputation as one of the world’s most distinguished colour photographers of royalty and members of the international beau monde and built up a warm personal relationship with members of Britain’s royal family; one newspaper described him as “The man who shot the Queen”.
A former Royal Navy photographer, Davis began photographing royalty in the 1950s after seeing Princess Margaret “with a tiara, gown and beautiful colouring. I thought the world would like to see it”. He was soon accompanying the family on trips abroad and was nicknamed “our Christmas tree” by the Duke of Edinburgh because he was covered in cameras and flash lights.
He accompanied the Queen on more than 50 state visits and tours and was given unprecedented access to family members both on- and off-duty, developing a good rapport with the Queen, Prince Charles and Princess Margaret in particular.
In an interview with the Sunday Express last year he recalled how the Queen would sometimes intervene during shoots to jolly things along. In 1969 he was invited to photograph the family in the gardens of Frogmore House, Windsor, and, since the grass was wet, found a Persian rug for them to sit on: “When Prince Philip saw it he remarked: ‘Whatever is a Persian carpet doing in the middle of Windsor?’ Thankfully the Queen eased the situation, saying to the two younger boys: ‘Come along children, let’s sit on the magic carpet and fly away’.”
Later the same day, when the Prince refused to be photographed with the Queen swinging Prince Edward between them, the Queen again intervened, saying to Princess Anne, “Come on, you and I will do it.”
“I always saved these riskier ideas for last,” Davis recalled, “just in case the subjects weren’t keen but this worked beautifully.”
He developed great sympathy for Prince Charles, charting his development from a shy, rather unhappy schoolboy in awe of his “dictatorial” father to a young man growing in confidence (in 1976 Davis got the first picture of the prince sporting a beard) and taking an interest in the opposite sex. “The last time I saw him was on Prince William’s fourth birthday at Kensington Palace,” Davis recalled, “and I noticed he is a very natural, caring father … I think it’s the way he would have liked to be treated as a child.”
His favourite subject, however, was Princess Margaret: “She was just so vibrant – and had these beautiful azure eyes. She really was the Diana of her day – everything I took of her was in demand.”
Davis’s portfolio included 14 Royal weddings in seven different countries, Sir Winston Churchill, the Shah and Empress of Iran, and actresses such as Sophia Loren, Elizabeth Taylor and Grace Kelly.
He enjoyed working with Sophia Loren, recalling how, in the middle of a shoot in Paris in 1975, her husband, the film producer Carlo Ponti, entered the room and she immediately started kissing him: “Naturally, I averted my gaze … until she insisted I photograph the two of them like that.” When the session was over the actress kissed a delighted Davis on both cheeks.
In 1976, on a photo shoot with Liz Taylor during a Royal Visit to the United States, the actress asked Davis if he could arrange a visit for her to the Royal Yacht: “I told her I couldn’t arrange that but I could arrange for her to attend a cocktail reception for the Queen at the embassy in Washington.”
As he was on duty he could not escort her himself, but arranged for the American politician John Warner, whom he had met at the Iranian embassy, to be her partner for the night: “Later that year he became her sixth husband.”
Grace Kelly, as Princess Grace of Monaco, was perhaps his most difficult sitter – “haughty, arrogant and distant beyond belief ” was his verdict.
“She only agreed to a private audience because I had previously had a private audience with the Queen, and then when I asked her to play the piano she claimed she couldn’t play a note. And then of course she lifts the lid and plays like a concert pianist. I mean, really …
“She certainly wasn’t the sort of person you’d dare remind that her grandad was an Irish bricklayer, not for all the chips in the Monte Carlo casino.”
Reginald Davis was born on March 5 1925 in North London. His parents, Sydney and Hannah, moved to St Albans when war broke out and he joined the St Albans Sea Cadets, becoming head Sea Cadet. He was called up in March 1943.
He was briefly trained as a photographer and was transferred to the Fleet Air Arm and subsequently served in the aircraft carrier Victorious in the Pacific.
After demob he joined Dominion Press, a small Fleet Street agency which seconded him to Boulting Brothers, the film-makers, who were then working on Brighton Rock. They were so impressed with his stills photography work that they offered him a full-time job and he subsequently covered the making of such films as Private Angelo and
The Guinea Pig, getting to know actors such as Richard Attenborough and Peter Ustinov. In 1951 he joined the Daily
Express and soon began covering Royal functions, banquets and film premieres. Later he went freelance, moving from black and white to colour photography.
His work took him to almost every country in the world, covering more than 2 million miles. He had photographs in the Royal Collection and one of his portraits of the Queen is in the National Portrait Gallery. Among other awards, in 1962 he won both the first and second Encyclopaedia Britannica prizes for colour photography and in 1971 he was presented with first prize in the same category in the Rothmans Awards.
He was made a fellow of the Master Photographers’ Association, the British Institute of Professional Photographers and of the Royal Photographic Society. He was once the guest of honour at a banquet given by King Bhumibol and Queen Sirikit of Thailand at the Grand Palace in Bangkok, and in 1978 he was awarded the Insignia of Taj by the Shah of Iran.
Davis did much work for charity, serving as president of the Hendon Rotary Club, raising several thousand pounds for the North London Hospice and helping organisations such as Jewish Care. He gave many talks in schools and for charity. A week before he died he was interviewed by the Fleet Air Arm’s Photographic Association as the last surviving Fleet Air Arm photographer from the Second World War.
Davis produced 10 books of his photographs, including My Life Photographing Royalty and the Famous, which was published last
year.
In 2008 he was appointed MBE for services to photography and charity.
In 1958 he married Audrey, whom he had met in Brighton during the filming of Brighton
Rock. She survives him with their daughter.
Reginald Davis, born March 5 1925, died July 14 2018