A new exhibition of pictures charting 25 years of the Westcountry's biggest news stories opens today.

It showcases the work of photojournalist Richard Lappas, whose photographs have appeared in newspapers across the south-west, as well as the nationals, during his quarter-century as a press cameraman.

Fifty-year-old Richard, a Londoner, began his career as a caption-writer at the Keystone Press Agency and moved west in 1977 for a job at the Devon News Service, which no longer exists.

He went freelance in 1983 and has mainly worked for the Daily Mail, and Mail On Sunday, with his pictures also making the front page of sister paper the Western Morning News on several occasions.

He will display 45 of his favourite pictures in his home city of Exeter at the Delta centre.

They range from members of the Royal family and MPs to an air crash in Devon and the grounding of a timber freighter of Cornwall last year.

His work has taken in the Jeremy Thorpe scandal, the disappearance of schoolgirl Genette Tate, and more recently, harrowing images from the foot and mouth crisis.

Richard said: "Whether we approve or not of what some newspapers do, they still sell in massive numbers and hold huge power and influence.

"The only golden rule that applies to all the pictures in show in the exhibition is that I was in the right place at the right time.

"All the pictures are stunning but they are stunning for what they mean to the industry, not because I took them."

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