film director Otto Preminger. "I stayed at the Georges VI hotel, dined at Maxim's, and went to the Crazy Horse nightclub. This was the beginning of a great adventure that would last for decades." In June 1954, Steen began his National Service, spending the first few months in Germany as an Army photographer. He was then despatched to Egypt where he was promoted to the rank of sergeant. "My mum and dad were very proud." From his base in Ismialia, Egypt, he was sent by the War Office to cover many stories in the Middle East; Cyprus, Libya, Aden and Somalia. By the time he was demobbed (in June 1956) Steen had accomplished an immense amount of travel and photography. He returned to Picture Post, but a year later the magazine ceased publication. Soon afterwards, he was offered a job as a photographer on Britain's first newspaper for women, Women's Sunday Mirror. The publication was founded by Hugh Cudlipp, who gave Steen an assignment to photograph a woman delivering her own baby under hypnosis. <blockquote>The pictures were amazing; the mother and her husband and me with a Rolleiflex in a small bedroom in north London. I entered a sequence of nine photos in the Encyclopædia Britannica Press Photographs of the Year Awards. I won first prize. I was 21, the youngest photographer to win.</blockquote> He joined the Daily Mail as a feature photographer during 1959–1960 before going freelance. He began to work for Queen magazine in 1962, and soon afterwards such publications as The Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph and Nova. Steen's website biography describes him as having been "trained on the maxim 'every picture tells a story'". He focused on photographing film stars, actors, criminals, politicians, prime ministers and many men, women and children going about their everyday lives. His book, Heroes and Villains (Genesis Publications, 2005), contains 100 photographs of famous and infamous men who were photographed by Steen over the years and was also the subject of an exhibition. Lucy Hughes-Hallett wrote for The Spectator about the book: This isn't a pantheon of heroes, but it is a celebration of manly beauty [although Steen proves] that you don't need to be a beauty to make a beautiful picture. But it is also, to anyone who was alive in Britain in 1963, intensely evocative of that lost world. Steen is a pro – technically accomplished and unpretentious. There aren't