‘If I had to ask: “Ma’am, would you remove your handbag?” she did so, which was great’
They were women who blazed a trail in their respective fields, a pair of pioneers of the same generation who could have coined the term “girl power” long before it was invented.
One was the Queen; the other broke the mould by becoming the BBC’s first female photographer. And when their worlds repeatedly collided over two decades, they formed an unprecedented bond.
A legend in her own lifetime, Joan Williams has taken more personal “snaps”, as she calls them, of the Queen than any other photographer. For 23 years, she covered official state visits and the Queen’s Christmas broadcasts, also shooting the monarch at work with her famous red boxes.
But their connection was first cemented when Joan took candid portraits of Her Majesty for the 1969 TV film , the first documentary to bring into focus the daily life of the monarch.
