This will serve as a warning to editors.

Solicitor Peter Crawford

The couple decided not to go through the newspaper watchdog, the Press Complaints Commission (PCC), but launched a court action under the Human Rights Act instead.

In a joint statement the couple said: "We have always accepted that because of the nature of our work we are both bound to be subject of some press interest.

"It is, however, very important to us to have some private space to ourselves and to have our privacy respected."

Solicitor Peter Crawford, who represented the couple, said this could open the floodgates to more court cases.

He said: "The case will give some comfort to people who find themselves the subject of unwanted attention from the paparazzi.

"This will serve as a warning to editors to take care not to buy or publish pictures of people in places where they have a reasonable expectation of privacy."

The Human Rights Act establishes for the first time in UK law a right to privacy.

High profile

Holden, 30, and 47-year-old Dennis have been regularly featured in gossip columns after she was pictured in a newspaper with Men Behaving Badly star Neil Morrissey last year.

The couple decided on a trial separation in summer 2000, saying in a statement "they retained "great love for each other" but added that "space is needed".

Just a few weeks later they announced that they were getting back together having patched things up.

They have been married for six years.

The couple's action against a newspaper echoes BBC newsreader Anna Ford's failed High Court challenge when holiday pictures of her in a bikini were published in the Daily Mail and OK! magazine.

They used pictures of Ms Ford on a beach with her partner, former astronaut David Scott, taken with telephoto lenses.

Anna Ford was disappointed by PCC decision

She lost her bid in the High Court to challenge a PCC decision to reject her claim that paparazzi invaded her holiday privacy.

After the ruling, Ms Ford said she was disappointed because she felt the PCC had made the wrong adjudication.

She said she had been on a tiny beach six feet wide with very few members of the public around.

"It was the press which took secretive photographs and sold them for profit who were the intrusion into our privacy," she told BBC News 24.

"Any citizen has the right to privacy on a quiet beach anywhere in the world if they are seeking privacy."

The Commission disagreed, saying the beach was a public place, and rejected her complaint.