Tribal chief: face of the man who would be king

The young face of the future King Edward VIII is among an unusual collection of Royal photographs found hidden in a school cupboard, which were donated to the nation yesterday.

The image of the teenage Prince of Wales, dressed as a chief of the Blackfoot tribe, is in an album of 100 pictures taken by Canadian photographer Howard Chapman. The collection was presented to Bircham Primary School, Norfolk, by Queen Mary in 1945. The school is five miles from the royal family's Sandringham estate.

Most of the prints are of members of the royal family meeting officers on the front during the First World War and visiting Victoria, British Columbia. They cover a period from the 1890s to the 1930s. The collection also records the suffering of Canadian soldiers in the mud of Flanders.

Queen Mary also gave the school a wooden curio cabinet to display the album and other gifts. The pictures are believed to have been put in the back of the cabinet after teachers decided that some of the war pictures were too disturbing for young children. For decades the album, entitled Those Glorious Years, was left to gather dust.

Three years ago it was rediscovered by former acting head teacher Ann Brown, who sent the pictures to Norwich Museum for safe-keeping.

The school, which has just 29 pupils, yesterday donated the album to the Royal Commonwealth Society photographic collection at Cambridge University library.