The Queen Mother’s official biographer, William Shawcross, is in line for the same role with the Prince of Wales, suggests diarist Ephraim Hardcastle.

Shawcross, who occasionally dines with the Prince and Camilla at Highgrove, has been staunchly supporting Prince Charles on the radio following this week’s public relations disaster in the High Court. He also seems to have replaced Norman St John Stevas, now Lord St John of Fawsley, as the loyal talking head on television and radio.

Honours are clearly afoot, if not book deals, for Willie.

Nether Lypiatt, the country house of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent.

Nether Lypiatt, the 36-acre estate and country house of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, has been reduced from £6m to £5.5m after nine months languishing unsold on the market.

The 1703 manor house, in Bisley, near Stroud, Gloucestershire, was bought by the Kent’s in 1981 for £300,000. It sports eight bedrooms, six bathrooms and has four staff flats.

Recent reports suggested that noise from the nearby Pony Club may have put prospective purchasers off. But one insider is alleged to have described the state of decoration as “dog-eared” and the decor as like a “giant boudoir”.

Property experts have suggested that a price of £4.5m is more realistic.

Prince Charles and Duchess of Cornwall.

The Prince of Wales’s role as a political dissident was exposed in the High Court today in an attempt by the Prince to keep his private diaries secret.

It was revealed by a former Private Secretary that Charles sees himself as a “political dissident”. His views on everything from alternative medicine to hunting and architecture conflict with the prevailing political culture, he believes. He regards it a matter of honour to speak his mind in these areas.

However, in the British constitution, a Monarch is non-political and remains above the cut and thrust of day-to-day debate and decision-making in order to act as a unifying influence on the nation. In his long stint as heir to the throne, the Prince has shown no inclination to adopt this position, as has his mother, the Queen.

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The Prince of Wales’s lawyers are in the High Court in London today to establish the principle that the Prince’s private journals are not public documents that may freely be published “in the national interest”.

Recently The Mail on Sunday newspaper published extracts from the journal, which it obtained from a disgraced secretary who used to work in his office. The extracts concerned the ceremony to hand Hong Kong back to Chinese rule in 1994.

Charles was quoted as calling the event, “a Chinese takeaway”, and described the Chinese leaders as, “appalling old waxworks”.

Not surprisingly, he’s anxious that the Mail doesn’t publish any of the other eight journals it’s thought to have in its possession.

The case is ongoing. Royal Anecdotes will monitor proceedings and report them here.