A Royal Photographer Who Has Covered the Windsor Family for 50 Years Says Archie & Lilibet Should Receive Royal Protection

Oct 29, 2026 by apost team

Arthur Edwards has photographed the British royal family for more than 50 years. He was there for Charles and Diana. He was there for William and Harry as boys. He has seen this family in more unguarded moments than almost any outsider alive. When he speaks about what the royal family owes its members, people listen.

This week, promoting his new memoir “Cup of Tea, Arthur? My Extraordinary 50 Years Photographing the Royal Family,” Edwards told The Telegraph that Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet should receive royal protection. “They should get royal protection,” he said, “because if they were kidnapped, there would be uproar.”

The statement arrives at a significant moment. Harry and Meghan relocated from Montecito, California to the United Kingdom in August 2026 — bringing Archie, 7, and Lilibet, 5, with them. The family’s security situation has been one of the most publicly contested issues since Harry stepped back from royal duties in 2020. He lost his taxpayer-funded police protection when he ceased to be a working royal. He has fought through the courts, and in public statements, to have it reinstated — arguing that his family faces genuine threats that private security cannot adequately address.

The Home Office, which oversees the body responsible for determining state-funded royal protection, has not changed its position. A Buckingham Palace spokesperson previously stated that charitable and public appearances by non-working royals are “a personal matter for them both and undertaken in a private capacity,” and that any security needed should be arranged with “the relevant police authorities.”

Edwards’s view, expressed from the perspective of someone who has watched this family across five decades, is simpler: Archie and Lilibet are a prince and princess of the House of Windsor. They should be protected accordingly.

The security question is the most practically significant unresolved issue of the Sussex return. Harry and Meghan arrived in the UK in August with their children and enrolled Archie and Lilibet in a local school — the name and location of which have been deliberately withheld. Within two days, the children were withdrawn. No official explanation was given. The school withdrawal prompted immediate speculation about security concerns, though neither Harry nor Meghan’s team has confirmed this as the reason.

Edwards, who has spoken warmly about Harry in the past and expressed hope that he would “bounce back” from the estrangement with his family, is not a hostile voice in the Sussex debate. His argument about the children’s security is presented not as a criticism of the royal family’s position but as a common-sense assessment of risk. “If they were kidnapped,” he said, “there would be uproar.” The logic is straightforward: whatever the adults have decided about each other, the children are identifiable members of one of the most famous families in the world.

Edwards also asked, in the same interview, why Archie and Lilibet had spent years in California rather than in the UK — “playing with their cousins” and “getting to run around Balmoral and Windsor.” The question reflects a perspective widely held among royal insiders: that the Sussex children’s separation from their royal family has costs that the security dispute only makes more visible.

The memoir that generated the interview is a record of half a century spent in close proximity to the Windsor family. Edwards has seen what royal life does to people. He has also seen what the absence of it can mean. Both, apparently, are on his mind.

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Do you think Archie and Lilibet should receive royal protection now that they are living in the UK? Do you think Arthur Edwards’s argument is one the royal family should take seriously? Let us know in the comments and pass this on to your family, friends, and other royal fans out there!