Later, the royal family confirmed that “legal proceedings for breach of privacy have been commenced today in France by The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge against the publishers of Closer Magazine France”.
Pieau has insisted Closer has no regrets about printing the pictures.
“These photos are not in the least shocking. They show a young woman sunbathing topless, like the millions of women you see on beaches,” she told AFP.
In one of the shots, the couple are laughing as they lounge in chairs near a folded red parasol. In another, Catherine holds the top of her bikini across her chest, either taking it off or putting it back on.
Closer said the pictures were taken on the terrace of the Autet Chateau in Provence, southern France. The magazine said the chateau is owned by Viscount Linley, the son of Queen Elizabeth II’s late sister Princess Margaret.
The palace said the royal couple “remain focused” on their tour of Singapore, Malaysia, the Solomon Islands and the tiny Pacific island of Tuvalu to mark the diamond jubilee of William’s grandmother Queen Elizabeth II.
The pictures are a further headache for the royal family, following the publication last month of nude photos of William’s younger brother Harry in a Las Vegas hotel.
The pictures are a further headache for the royal family, following the publication last month of nude photos of William’s younger brother Harry in a Las Vegas hotel.
Comparing the pictures to those of Harry cavorting naked with a mystery woman as he played strip billiards, the magazine said: “Here there is no question of alcohol, of strip billiards or compromising positions, but simply a spouse at ease with her body, who has nothing to hide from her husband.
“Moments of grace, of complicity. Of love in its purest. Images of cloudless happiness.”
Rupert Murdoch’s top-selling British tabloid The Sun, the only British paper to publish the pictures of Harry, said it would not print the photographs of Catherine, and there was no sign of any other British publication doing so.
“The Sun has no intention of breaching the royal couple’s privacy. The circumstances are very different to those relating to the photos of Prince Harry in Las Vegas,” editor Dominic Mohan said.
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