The editor of the Italian gossip magazine which published topless photographs of the Duchess of Cambridge has warned that the royal couple have no legal redress in Italy.

Alfonso Signorini, defending his decision to publish pictures of Kate sunbathing in Chi magazine, said the images were taken from a public road by photographers on public land and were permissible under Italian privacy laws.

A special 26-page edition of the magazine, which is owned by former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, was published on Monday despite legal action in France taken by the couple's lawyers against France's Closer magazine, which published them first.

The front cover of Chi has the words "Kate Middleton Court Scandal - the Queen is nude!".

Mr Signorini said that it was his business to "sell photographic scoops" and he was the director of a newspaper, "not a supermarket".

"I am a director of a newspaper not a supermarket, I don't sell artichokes and carrots, I sell photographic scoops," he said.

"They were taken on a public road by photographers on public land. The Italian privacy laws say that we can quite happily take pictures from a public road."