See Photos of Prince George’s Secret Ski Trip!

Last week was perhaps not the ideal moment for Prince William, who has recently been labelled ‘workshy’ after it was revealed he has worked less than a hundred hours this year in his job as a helicopter pilot, to take his family on a lavish ski holiday.

So perhaps that explains why a media blackout was imposed and the Cambridge ski vacation taken in absolute privacy, with all but one favoured photographer kept well away from the secret location in the French Alps – rumored to be Val d’Isere – where the Cambridges enjoyed their vacay.

The carefully staged photographs included snaps of Prince George and Charlotte, and even one of William and Kate engaging in a mock snowball fight.

One photograph shows the Cambridge family standing in their ski gear with George and Charlotte wrapped up in snowsuits and woollen hats. In another George looks delighted to be standing in the middle of a snow flurry while his baby sister gurgles happily in his mother's arms.

When William and Harry were kids, their parents would hold a photo-call for all media on their ski holidays, but William instead invited a single Press Association photographer to capture a few images of the trip.

The strategy appears to have been a success as these are undoubtedly the most relaxed portraits of the family ever released by Kensington Palace.