The Irish National Stud breeding course graduate who played a leading role in the coronation

Good Morning Bloodstock is Martin Stevens' daily morning email and presented here online as a sample.

Here he talks to someone from 'our world' who was thrust into the global spotlight as part of his involvement in a rather notable event last weekend. And no, it wasn't the Guineas meeting.

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There were no doubt quite a few thoroughbred owners and/or breeders among the great and the good assembled at Westminster Abbey for the coronation last Saturday – not least King Charles III and the Queen Consort themselves, of course.

But there was also a graduate of the Irish National Stud breeding course who played a pivotal part in the ceremony, in his role as official photographer. His name has featured in picture bylines in publications around the world since his images of King Charles, Queen Camilla and the royal family were released on Monday. 

Hugo Burnand, the man in question, worked and studied in Tully alongside the likes of Sheena Collins, Victor Connolly, Michael Downey, Joe O’Flynn and Michael Youngs in 1983. You might remember that I interviewed him two years ago for the course’s 50th anniversary.

In what turned out to be a colourful article, he told me about flying to Ireland in a clapped out horse plane, which on arrival was searched by garda looking for the recently kidnapped Shergar, and being dumped at the Irish National Stud by a horse transporter in the middle of the night.

As soon as the course started, the students were duped into signing up to the Irish Farmers’ Association and were called out on strike, and later they had to deal with an outbreak of strangles in the equine population. There were also juicy titbits of news of extra-curricular activities, the most printable of which was the all-night Pimm’s parties on the Curragh.

Burnand later spent a few months at Coolmore, where he proved unequal to the task of showing off a badly behaved seven-figure Hello Gorgeous yearling colt to potential investors, before trying his hand as an apprentice bloodstock agent in Kentucky and heading up the insurance department of the BBA.

Eventually, he decided bloodstock wasn’t for him and made a career out of his passion for photography instead. For many years he earned a crust by taking pictures of society events for Tatler, before being introduced to Camilla and hitting it off with her, and becoming a regular photographer at royal events.

He took the official pictures for the King and Queen’s wedding in 2005, the King’s 60th birthday in 2008, the Prince and Princess of Wales’s wedding in 2011 and then, quite literally the crowning moment of his career, the coronation on Saturday. 

Since then he has found himself in the glare of the media spotlight, being interviewed by a host of international newspapers and magazines. As ever, where the Racing Post leads, the New York Times follows.

“I’ve been working with the King and Queen on and off for about 20 years, so a friendly but nonetheless professional relationship has built up between us,” says Burnand, who graciously spared some time in the busiest week of his life to speak to Good Morning Bloodstock.

Hugo Burnand: has come a long way from his days at the Irish National Stud but retains his interest in racing and bloodstock Credit: Hugo Burnand

“The fact that their family already knows me and my team kept it a lot tighter emotionally, and meant I didn’t overthink the enormity of it all. If it had been my first job with them I think I might have freaked out, but luckily that wasn’t an issue I needed to worry about.”

The official pictures of the King and Queen in their regalia, taken in the throne room and green drawing room of Buckingham Palace shortly after the ceremony, are typical of Burnand’s style. They are necessarily formal and stately, but they also contain a touch of humanity; a hint of a smile here, a more relaxed angle there.

“This is the King and Queen, after all, so there has to be a certain amount of majesty and regality in the portraits, but they are also human beings, and I want the person looking at the pictures to feel a connection with them,” he says.

“I had an amazing team of people working on the technical side, but no matter how much you get the light right, the angles right, the composition right, the height of the tripod right, it’s all about trying to capture some emotion, and if you can’t see that emotion there in the room, no one looking at the photographs later will be able to see it either. 

“So while my team are getting everything right behind the lens, I have to be in a position to engage in some sort of communication with the people in front of the lens, to ensure that human connection takes place when the pictures are published.”

A crucial part of Burnand’s role was therefore putting the royal family at ease on a day of incredibly high pressure.

“It was really important for me to remember that this is a big deal for them as individuals, as human beings,” he says. “It’s a hard day for them, full of stress, and so when they walked into the throne room to be photographed they had to recognise the Hugo they’d seen every other time; to be able to breathe a sigh of relief that they were in safe hands. The worst thing I could have done was to act differently, or appear to be overcome by the occasion.”

Always a horseman at heart, Burnand’s own nerves at taking the first official coronation photographs since the great Cecil Beaton in 1953 were steadied on Saturday by a familiar soothing sound.

He says: “I heard the hooves of the horses drawing the carriages away from Buckingham Palace, and on their return later, as I was setting up in the throne room with a few windows open to keep a breeze coming through. It’s an unforgettable noise, one that people who work with horses have probably grown accustomed to, but it’s incredibly special when you’ve been away from it.”

Burnand’s life is coming full circle this year, as aside from the coronation it is becoming what he calls “the year of the horse” for him in a professional sense.

“I’ve got an exhibition coming up next month on the subject of Nic Fiddian-Green’s horse-head sculptures, which are in Marble Arch and Ascot among other places,” he continues. “For the past decade or so I’ve been photographing him sculpting and installing the sculptures in different parts of the world, and this year I’ve been putting the finishing touches on a book containing the images. 

“Many of them are still portraits of sculptures, or people interacting with them, but I’ve still thought an awful lot about each one and how the person looking at the photo might form an emotional connection with them.”

King Charles III, photographed by Hugo BurnandCredit: Hugo Burnand

What’s more, Burnand has returned to his roots by dipping a toe into racehorse ownership thanks to his friendship with Harry Herbert.

“I’ve known Harry since I was about 17 or 18 and we were in Lexington trying to forge skyrocketing careers in the bloodstock industry, while getting drunk a lot,” he says. “So, when he got married to Clodagh McKenna a couple of years ago he asked me to photograph the wedding.

“I told him I’m far too expensive, and that I charge like a wounded buffalo, but he said he wanted to know what a wounded buffalo looks like and so I sent him an estimate. We went ahead, but of course in return he made sure I took a hoof in a Highclere syndicate horse. 

“I chose Stromboli [a four-year-old son of Acclamation], who was the most beautiful horse I’ve seen; I’ve genuinely never seen anything more handsome, and I thought it was only right that a photographer had a stunning horse.

“But guess what? Like all those sorts of horses he didn’t really live up to his looks on the racecourse.”

At least Stromboli gave Burnand some good stories to tell, not that he is short of those.

“There was one memorable race in particular, one of his last, when he was basically running against hamsters and guinea pigs by that point,” he relates. “He was third favourite, but the first favourite was a non runner, so as we set off my horse became second favourite, but then the new first favourite managed to trip itself up in a Flat race, so I thought this was some sort of divine intervention and I was finally going to have a winner. 

“But poor old Stromboli was in unfamiliar territory and didn’t know what to do, so he spent most of the race looking around to see where his friends were, and finished second. 

“It didn’t matter, though. I got so much pleasure from him, even if he didn’t really do much except look beautiful. He’s a hunter now, and I’m sure he looks beautiful doing that too.”

Herbert couldn’t let that be his old friend’s sole experience of Highclere racing syndicates, and got him into another horse last year. Tribute, another son of Acclamation, is looking rather more promising, having finished a close third in smart company at Southwell on his second start for Simon and Ed Crisford on Monday.

“Harry was very embarrassed about Stromboli and said we can do better than that, so I’m in Tribute now,” says Burnand. “It’s so exciting to be involved in racing again, if only on the edges, and I rather like that he’s called Tribute. I’ve been to Newmarket, and visited the Crisfords, and it’s been wonderful. It would be lovely to be in the winner’s enclosure at Royal Ascot, of course, but I suspect that will have to be in another lifetime.”

Simon and Ed Crisford - can hopefully cajole a victory out of Tribute, in whom Burnand has a shareCredit: Edward Whitaker

Sadly Burnand was unable to watch Tribute showing off his potential on Monday, as it was that very day that the official coronation photographs were released to the world. 

“I was just really glad my horse wasn’t running on Saturday, I wouldn’t have known what to do,” he says. 

The King and Queen did, however, have a few runners on the afternoon following the coronation, with Saga just touched off in second in the Suffolk Handicap at Newmarket. 

Now, Burnand is hilariously indiscreet at times but he rigidly sticks to protocol when it comes to reporting what is said within the walls of Buckingham Palace, so he rebuffs my question about whether Saga’s owners managed to see the race, or even commented on the result. 

He does confirm, though, that it didn’t make any significant impact on the day – “afraid not, didn’t happen” – which means that the image of the royal family in full regalia, huddled around a mobile phone watching Racing TV, and the King riding the finish using the sceptre as a pretend pro-Cush will have to remain solely a figment of my imagination. 

What do you think?

Share your thoughts with other Good Morning Bloodstock readers by emailing gmb@racingpost.com

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