Freud is said to have been denied all the sittings he required; the photographers were not allowed the time a shoot normally demands either.It is understood that the photographers were chosen by Buckingham Palace in consultation with the leading agency Magnum. Lord Snowdon, another famous photographer related to the Queen, was not asked to contribute a portrait.The Canadian Bryan Adams is thought to have been chosen to represent the Commonwealth. In a 20-year musical career he has had four American number one singles and won awards including a Grammy. His music and songs for films have been nominated for three Oscars but never won. Adams has raised money for Greenpeace, Amnesty International and a campaign to save whales. In 1998 he organised a concert that raised a million dollars for a Canadian breast cancer screening centre.His first major photographic work was an exhibition called “Made In Canada”, in aid of Breast Cancer Awareness.

The 89 portraits of prominent Canadian women featured Joni Mitchell, Margaret Trudeau and a close friend called Donna who died of cancer at the age of 38. “She became my muse and her passing away spurred me on to continue something I had already started,” he said. Adams then shot a similar collection of black and white portraits of famous British women including Joan Collins, Betty Boothroyd, Elizabeth Hurley and Barbara Cartland. They were published in aid of the Haven Trust, which has a support centre in London for women suffering from breast cancer.Rankin’s last project was also for a cancer charity. The exhibition and book Male Nudes included a self-portrait and a naked man straddling a lion. The subjects were volunteers who had answered an advertisement in Time Out. Rankin said his images were meant to challenge the hang-ups people have about the naked male form, which often meant prostate and testicular cancer went undetected.It is not known whether Buckingham Palace has a regular subscription to Dazed & Confused, or a copy of Snog, Rankin’s record of couples of every persuasion doing just that.John Rankin Waddell was born in Glasgow in 1966.

He trained as an accountant but dropped out of Brighton Polytechnic and enrolled on a photography course at the London College of Printing. There he met the writer Jefferson Hack, with whom he launched Dazed & Confused in 1991. It rejuvenated the tired old format of style magazines by being more deliberately confrontational and grittier One fashion story used amputees as models. His work has been characterised as possessing “unflinching intimacy and a warm sense of humour”.