Royal anger grows as Irish paper prints Kate Middleton's topless photos

Topless photographs of the Duchess of Cambridge were being published across Europe last night (Saturday) despite a threat by her husband to bring legal action for the "extreme intrusion into their marriage".

In a sign of the couple's growing anger, a St James's Palace spokesman accused newspapers and magazines that have published the pictures of being motivated only by greed.

Richard Desmond, the British media mogul who owns the Express and Star newspapers and Channel 5, was dragged into the row after a title he co-owns in Ireland published the intimate images yesterday.

Mr Desmond's Northern and Shell Group issued a statement saying it "abhorred" the decision to publish by the Irish Daily Star and was taking steps to end its involvement with the newspaper in Ireland.

Lawyers acting for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have already begun a civil action against a French magazine, Closer, and were set to launch another against the Italian publication Chi.

Both titles are owned by Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister of Italy.

The editor of Chi said his magazine would publish a 26-page special edition tomorrow (Monday), containing dozens of photographs of the Duke and Duchess on the balcony of a chateau in Provence owned by Viscount Linley, the Prince's cousin.

The publication of the photographs engulfed the Duke and Duchess's Diamond Jubilee tour of South East Asia and the South Pacific. Yesterday, the couple were lifted by rope into the tree tops of the Borneo rainforest, smiling for the cameras and looking relaxed despite the furore around them.

A spokesman for St James's Palace criticised media groups who have used or intend to use the pictures. "There can be no motivation for this action other than greed," he said.

The series of pictures were taken by an unidentified paparazzi photographer who staked out the property from a spot about 700 yards away.

The failure of the security team to protect the couple from intrusion was highlighted last night when another photographer told The Sunday Telegraph of the ease with which she had taken "decent" pictures of the couple from the same spot a few days earlier.

Valerie Suau, who works for La Provence regional newspaper, said she was astonished that the residence where they were holidaying had not been heavily guarded. She said she was "given free rein" to do what she liked without being stopped.

Yesterday, a royal aide said that the couple hoped a criminal investigation would also be launched by the French police, which they would be happy to support.

Under French law, breach of privacy is a criminal offence carrying a maximum fine of about pounds 36,000 and a possible one-year jail sentence for Closer's editor and for the photographer.

A royal aide said: "Their thinking speaks for itself in what Prince William has said about the extreme level of intrusion into their marriage and intimate life together. They felt that if they didn't take this stance now after that, they never would.

"They were in an isolated house where the nearest public road was over a kilometre away, so they had every expectation of privacy.

"If you take it to the extreme in which this paparazzo took these photos, obviously it intrudes into their privacy in the most grotesque manner."

The aide said the couple would look at every legal option open to them.

He added: "The couple will do whatever is in their power to seek redress and make sure the photos are never used again.

"The couple together took the decision to begin legal proceedings against Closer. The Prince of Wales and the Queen were informed of the decision."

The Duke and Duchess have instructed Gerrard Tyrrell, senior partner at the London law firm Harbottle & Lewis, to act on their behalf.

Mr Tyrrell, who charges in the region of pounds 750 an hour, has long acted for the couple as well as celebrities such as David Beckham.

After publication yesterday, Richard Desmond's Northern & Shell distanced itself from the Irish Daily Star, a joint venture with the Irish media group Independent News & Media.

It said: "We abhor the decision of the Irish Daily Star to publish these intrusive pictures of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, which we, like St James's Palace, believe to be a grotesque invasion of their privacy.

"The Irish Daily Star is a joint venture with Independent News & Media over which we have no editorial control. We were not given advance notice of the decision to publish these pictures by their management and we are consulting with our lawyers as a matter of urgency over what we believe to be a serious breach of their contract."

However, Mike O'Kane, editor of the Irish Daily Star, which ran the photographs by copying pages of Closer's French edition, said: "The Duchess would be no different to any other celeb pics we would get in, for example Rihanna or Lady Gaga.

"She's not the future queen of Ireland, so really the only place this is causing fury seems to be in the UK, and they are very, very tasteful pictures."

Alfonso Signorini, Chi magazine's editor, said: "I am publishing them because this is a scoop. This is the first time that the future queen of England has been seen topless. These photos are not scandalous; they are natural and they do nothing bad to damage her image. If anything, they make her more likeable, more modern."

A copy of Chi's planned front cover, released by the magazine yesterday, shows a photograph of the Duchess sitting topless on the balcony of Chateau D'Autet in Provence, under the headline in Italian: "Scandal at the court: The Queen is naked."

The picture is more revealing than the one used on the cover of Closer on Friday.

The couple's legal team instructed Italian lawyers to investigate the possibility of preventing the publication of the photos by Chi.

Dr David Erdos, research fellow at Oxford University's centre for socio-legal studies, said there was a strong case to injunct the magazine.

"Italy has a privacy law which covers journalism and is legally binding," said Dr Erdos. He said that Italy's laws had been used by Mr Berlusconi to prevent publication of photographs of topless women at one of his pool parties.

Chi is owned by Mr Berlusconi's Mondadori publishing group and run by his daughter Marina, 46.

Penny Junor, the royal biographer, said the decision to sue would have been taken by the Duke, who she said was well versed in privacy laws and had closely followed a case brought by Princess Caroline of Monaco against the German media.

Charlotte Harris, a media lawyer with Mishcon de Reya, the firm that advised the Duke's mother in her divorce, said the hard line was necessary to discourage future intrusion. She pointed out that the British press, which is self-regulated, had not published the pictures, while a magazine in France, where the right to privacy is enshrined in law, had chosen to do so.