A booklet on one of England's best-known documentary photographers, from the Blitz to royal weddings, bringing together some of Hardy's most striking pictures from times of war and of peace.

Born in London in May 1913, the eldest of seven in a working-class family, he left school at fourteen to work as a messenger collecting and delivering film and prints from West End chemists for a processing company. He bought a plate camera from a pawnbroker's and, using his sister's head as a tripod, caught King George V and Queen Mary passing in a carriage down Blackfriars Road; he printed two hundred postcards and sold them around the neighbourhood. Combining cycling with the camera, he freelanced for The Bicycle, where he met the new miniature 35 mm machines. He bought a second-hand Leica, worked for an agency, and in 1940 joined the staff of Picture Post, before being called away to the Army's photographic unit — the Normandy landings, the march into Paris, the crossing into Germany, the liberation of Belsen. He returned to the magazine and was responsible for some of its greatest features.