Intimate Pictures from Michael Jackson's Family Album

For decades, he went to extraordinary lengths to shroud his family life in secrecy.Now with his passing, photographs of the troubled star are emerging online that give a remarkable insight into his world.These personal photos show a far more normal father and man than any of his bizarre showbusiness appearances of recent years.

In public, he has appeared masked, in a wheelchair or pyjama-clad with dark classes –looking ever more eccentric and grotesque. If his children were in tow then their faces have always been veiled or covered by strange masks.But in this personal collection of photographs, which appear to have been taken over the last six years, Jackson seemed happier behind closed doors.

In one shot, the star poses smiling in a red T-shirt decorated with an iconic image of him from the early 1980s.The picture is not dated but is believed to have been taken five years ago before the star was ravaged by anorexia.In another collection of images, Jackson sits cuddling his two eldest children Prince Michael Jr, 12 and Paris, 11 in 2003 at a children’s party.

The star looks like any proud father as his little girl, dressed in a Disney-style princess costume dress, sits on his knee.Draped over his shoulders, eldest son Prince Michael is wearing a skeleton costume and sporting shocking bottle blond hair.For years, Jackson had dyed the boy’s hair white blond, prompting critics to question whether the star was taking his obsession with being ‘white’ too far by pushing the Aryan look on to his children.

More recent pictures show that the elder children have dark hair but remarkably light skin and blue eyes, which is rare for the offspring of a mixed race relationship.Their colouring has prompted questions over whether Jackson is actually their father.In pictures taken from the same party, Jackson and his children are allegedly pictured with the children of close friends Al and Nancy Malnik.