THE year since Queen ­Elizabeth died seems to have flown by, but I still miss her deeply.

I will never forget that smile and her kindness and understanding which she mixed with humility despite being the most famous woman in the world.

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For more than four decades my life revolved around the set pieces of her year, each one a joy to cover for Britain’s favourite newspaper.

And on these pages today, we reproduce some of the most ­memorable images I captured.

This year I couldn’t help feeling the Derby, where the Queen was at her most relaxed and happy, was a non-event because not one senior member of the Royal Family was there.

Weeks later, Royal Ascot was not the same either, despite the King and Queen Camilla being there every day and William and Catherine adding their glamour during the week.

We have yet to see the next State ­Opening of Parliament, where she would have said: “My Government intends to do this or that” easily and without hesitation.

In November it will feel different with the new King seated on the throne performing the historic role.

King Charles was born to the job which he finally took over at the age of 73, and he has already made three fine speeches.

The first was after his mother died and his Christmas Day broadcast from the crypt at St George’s Chapel in Windsor was a stroke of genius.

For another, in Germany in March on his first foreign trip as King, he gave our country a massive boost, speaking in fluent German.

On the plane home I told him: “You have made three magnificent speeches.” And he replied: “Keep that up Arthur and you’ll get another MBE!” He is a king in touch with reality. He is well aware that times are not great and people are still struggling after Covid.

He is trying hard to keep up the traditions. He is spending more time at Sandringham now than he does at his old country home, Highgrove.

Royals are human like us

He has moved into Balmoral although he prefers Birkhall, his little home down the river.

I still find it hard to believe it is exactly 12 months ago this morning that I was the first journalist to ­realise our beloved Queen was on her deathbed.

The evening before, I’d been among a group of guests who had dined with Prince Charles at one of his proudest projects, Dumfries House in Ayrshire.

A piper played as the Prince, in good humour, came round and ­chatted to everybody.

There was no hint that less than 24 hours later he would be King.

Next day I was waiting for my taxi to the airport when all the Prince’s staff rushed back into the hotel, grabbed their bags and ran out the door.

They told me: “The day’s plans have all changed — we’re going to go back to Balmoral.”

It was then I realised that if the staff were heading back to the Queen’s summer residence in the Highlands, Prince Charles must have already gone ahead.

I rang The Sun office and told them: “I think something has happened with the Queen.”

Thankfully, Charles got there in time for him and Princess Anne to be able to spend a few hours with the Queen before she passed away just after 3pm.

Unfortunately, their brothers and the Queen’s grandchildren arrived too late.

Today, on the anniversary of her death, the Queen’s children will gather for a private service at Crathie Kirk church on the Balmoral estate.

I will be in Wales today with William and Catherine as they mark the day the Queen died and they moved a step nearer to the throne.

The Royal Family are only human, like the rest of us, yet we expect them to perform their duty whatever is happening in their lives — and they always deliver.

The King has performed spectacularly over the past 12 months.

And we are lucky to have William, Catherine and George as the future.

Today the new Prince and Princess of Wales will have their private memories of the Queen as they mark the anniversary in the principality.

I’m sure they will reflect on how they never reached Balmoral in time to say goodbye to their beloved grandmother.

They will remember the huge crowds that snaked along the Thames in London for the Lying In State and that moving funeral service.

I will take time between covering their official engagements to remember my amazing days with the Queen.

At the Durbar in Ghana, drums banging, all the people dancing and the Queen swaying.

In Jamaica she swayed to Bob Marley songs.

Trying to put on her tiara when the lights went out when she was getting ready for the State Banquet.

All the times she saw the funny side of life.

Making her historic speech at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing — she was so nervous addressing thousands of guests in this massive hall.

I can still see the smile that lit up her face and how she let her shoulders sag with such relief it was over.

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I still get quite emotional when I think about the amazing speeches the Queen made on another historic tour, to Ireland in 2011.

That visit seemed to change the mood between our two countries overnight, vanquishing the bloody legacy of the Troubles, those terrible shootings and bombings.

Since then Prince Charles has gone back every year to keep that good feeling going.

He gets a tremendous welcome from large crowds.

That is the Queen’s legacy.

I was in Scotland in 2015 when she became Britain’s longest-reigning monarch and she said: “It’s inevitable, you live a long life and this is going to happen.”

Watching her grow very old and feeble, I remember that magnificent blue outfit she wore on the Buckingham Palace balcony during her Platinum Jubilee.

The last ever picture of the Queen which was taken by Jane Barlow at Balmoral and it is ­wonderful.

She looks absolutely glamorous at 96, smiling and laughing.

Absolutely glamorous

I took my first-ever photo of the Queen almost by accident.

I was at Windsor Horse Show in April 1976 waiting to see if Prince Charles might turn up with a girlfriend.

Instead, I photographed the Queen in a headscarf with a very young Prince Edward.

I would take thousands more photos of her over the next four decades.

And I would patiently wait for the smile, which would always come at some stage.

When she smiled her face lit up, the room lit up and you felt everything was right in the world.

When we did overseas trips, I would send small six-by-four-inch prints for her diary.

Somewhere in the Windsor Archives in the Queen’s diaries, which will probably never be read in our lifetimes, there will be some of my little ­pictures stuck to the pages.

In 2012 at a banquet at Buckingham Palace the Queen said to me: “Thank you very much for those photographs you sent me.”

All I could say was: “Oh any time Ma’am, just give me a call.”

I didn’t know what else to say.

It was always such a shock and I was always stuck for words.

But with King Charles, I am not lost for words.

I have been working with him for nearly 48 years and was at RAF Northolt when he first returned to London after the Queen’s death.

As he got off the plane I was trying to recreate the picture of the young Queen coming off the plane from Africa in 1952 after her father, King George VI, had died.

Of course it didn’t quite work like that.

As I was trying to think about the shot, our new King came up and asked me if I was all right.

I said: “I’m so sorry to hear about the loss of your mother.”

And he replied: “It’s inevitable. It was going to happen one day.”

People who worked for the King told me that off-duty he was devastated at the loss of his mother but he put on an amazing show of strength to make a series of moving speeches.

A few days later I was back at Northolt on a dark, damp, miserable evening as a team of well-drilled airmen carried Her Majesty’s coffin off the back of a huge plane. Her final flight was over.

This tiny lady has left us a huge legacy.

She became Queen not long after World War Two ended and the country was a mess.

When she was thrust into the job in 1952, at the age of 25, I was a kid playing in bombed-out houses with no playing fields or parks.

But in her 70-year reign she saw our country go from strength to strength.

And in all that time she never, in my view, put a foot wrong.

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