‘I have a bit of a feeling for the Arab world,' says Lord Lichfield, here in Dubai to send his latest book speeding to coffee tables. And he sincerely admires that ‘creative germ' which says anything is possible.
Dubai's poshest visitor is back at the Burj. Lord Lichfield, celebrity portraitist and cousin of the Queen, has come to consign Dubai - A City Portrait to the city's coffee-tables.
By his side at the press conference, the rosy cheeks of Ian Fairservice, CEO of the publisher Motivate, glowed with personal and professional satisfaction.
I, on the other hand, had no idea who the Earl was. And it was a tremendous stroke of luck he was in the same position about me when we met for an interview the morning after the book launch.
"Someone came up last night - a really funny thing," he said, and his measured drawl momentarily took on an edge of steel.
"It just shows some people do their research badly. This person came up to Ian and he thought I was Lord Snowdon. He had the whole thing muddled up and the wrong way round."
I shook my head with amused disbelief at the shoddy standards of modern journalism and carefully avoided the gimlet eye of the PR lady. Anyway, since the book launch the previous evening I had found time to scour the internet.
A special aristocrat
In fact, the wiry 66-year-old with nut-brown loafers and an elegant grey mane is a rather special aristocrat.
In 1962, rejecting the famous dictum of Lord Chesterfield that a gentleman should never do anything too well, he took a £3-a-week (Dh20) job as a darkroom assistant.
It was a bold move, and his mother promptly cut off his allowance. "I felt it was heartless," he says.
"After I had had a fairly successful career in the army and was living comfortably, and suddenly I was on a pushbike peddling around London in the rain."
Not for long though. Within a few years he had established himself as a fashion photographer and society portraitist.
Highlights of his 40-year career include iconic portraits of sixties London, work for Vogue and Playboy, glamour calendars and official snaps for Charles and Diana's marriage (where he caught Diana comforting a wilting bridesmaid).
Now he seemed delighted to be sipping coffee with me in the Burj Al Arab's splendiferous lobby to promote his tenth book. "I have been coming here for four or five years," he says.
"And every time I look up or down or sideways, I see something different." Indeed, when the PR lady sent his butler to bring him over, he was busy using his mobile to photograph some pots by the lobby fountain.
Familiar subject
He stresses his latest opus (with a touch less flesh than "The Most Beautiful Women" or "Creating the Unipart Calendar") reflects genuine enthusiasm for the many facets of the city.
"I have a bit of a feeling for the Arab world," he says. "I was brought up partly in Tripoli and so I thought the old familiar smells will be reassuring. One thing is missing, which was the constant bane of my life as a child. I haven't seen or heard one donkey."
Yet he sincerely admires Dubai's quantum warp into modernity, despite this disappointing absence. "There seems to be a creative germ that has got into the psyche and says anything is possible," he says. "But there is also restraint."
All the same, the old-world courtesy of the Earl strikes an odd note in the glitzkrieg of the Burj lobby. The waiter who brings our coffee seems almost startled by the graciousness of his thanks.
Even his account of his introduction to a camera evokes a Wodehousean world of imposing relatives, stately homes and quietly efficient servants.
"I picked up a camera aged 6 because my grandfather took pictures and used to put his camera back on the hall table," he says.
"I discovered that if I took a picture with his camera and put it back on the hall table, the butler would have it developed. I just had to make sure to get to there first.
"Then there was an awful moment when I took something I shouldn't and it ended up on my grandfather's desk," he says. "I climbed up a fire escape and took a photograph through someone's bathroom building, aged 7."
The tricky transition from amateur to professional, which came 14 years later, involved the one unexpected element of Lichfield's immaculate appearance — a fading seahorse on his right forearm.
"When I was a soldier I had to make the decision whether or not I was going to take the plunge into photography," he says.
"Lord Snowdon had produced a book called London and one of the people he photographed was London's most famous tattooist, Mr Burchett of Waterloo Road.
"I took that picture as a yardstick," he says. "I said to myself the day I leave the army I will photograph him in my own way," he says. "If I think it stacks up against his photograph I will take the plunge."
So, at 6.47 on October 14, 1962, Lord Lichfield went to Mr Burchett and came away with a tattoo and the conviction there was space for both him and Lord Snowdon in the world of photography.
The crucial difference
My curiosity got the better of me and I ventured back into risky territory. So what was so terrible about being mistaken for Lord Snowdon?
"I am the earl who became a photographer. He is the photographer who became an earl. He is probably one of the greatest portrait photographers," he says. "I'll go down as having done a few good books and having had a wonderful life."
But Lord Lichfield does self-deprecation with such style that I don't know exactly how to take that.
