In 1950 the great American fashion photographer Irving Penn wrote to Cecil Beaton, for whom he had recently sat, praising his ‘vague clairvoyance, the gentleness of not meeting the subject too head-on’. Beaton himself put it more vividly: ‘I coo like a bloody dove.’ It required a particular quality of cooing to coax from his royal clientele the florid, uptight, boring, outlandish and occasionally wonderful images in the V&A’s exhibition of his royal portraits (until 22 April). The Windsors seem to have cooed back at Beaton a little. They almost seem to have realised that he was the one photographer of the last century who could make this remarkably unphotogenic family look halfway interesting.

LRB 5 April 2012 | PDF Download