Cecil Beaton and Audrey Hepburn pictured together at a fuction in 1965 (Rex Features)

It seems few stars were spared Beaton's stinging observations in his diary entries. Grace Kelly, he judged, had two sides to her face - "that side is very heavy, like a bull calf, but the left side is intensely feminine and creates the counter-point."

And Julie Andrews, the toast of the big-screen during the 60s, was, according to Beaton, "almost unbelievably naïve and simple. She was angelically patient at the many fittings of her clothes and never expressed opinion."

Artist Salvador Dali came in for perhaps the most embarrassing summary. "I loved him for being such an original individual but today was terribly put off by his really appalling bad breath," Beaton wrote.

But Audrey Hepburn (pictured above with Beaton) clearly entranced the photographer.

"It is a rare phenomenon to find a young girl with such inherent 'star' quality," he noted, of the Breakfast at Tiffany's star. "Yet she has too much innate candour to take on the gloss of artificiality Hollywood is apt to demand of its queens.

"Her voice is peculiarly personal, with its unaccustomed rhythm and sing-song cadence that develops into a flat drawl that ends in a childlike query. It has a quality of heartbreak.

"Intelligent and alert, wistful but enthusiastic, frank yet tactful, assured without conceit and tender without sentimentality."

"A make-believe siren, unsophisticated as a Rhine maiden": new book reveals Cecil Beaton's cutting verdicts on the stars he photographed