For the past couple of years there have been rumblings in palace corridors about the 82-year-old monarch wanting to spend more time in the castle, a royal home and fortress for more than 900 years.

Gossips in the royal circle have suggested that, while Buckingham Palace will always remain the official office and residence, the Queen is keen on moving more of her work to Windsor to give her long weekends and more days in the week there, as she takes it slightly easier in her advancing years.

She has insisted she will never abdicate, having vowed to serve her country and the Commonwealth until her dying day - though if she became too infirm to perform her duties there is just the outside possibility that she might hand over the reins of power to her heir.

But it stands to reason that, as she gets older, she will delegate more and more of her duties to her children and, as they get older, her grandchildren.

Whenever I've asked the Buckingham Palace press office about this officially, however, I've always been told that there are no plans for the Queen to go into semi-retirement at Windsor.

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The heir to the throne has warned that Britain’s gardeners should be braced to lose cherished species of plants and flowers because of global warming.

"There is no doubt that gardening everywhere will be affected by climate change," he says. "We are seeing this happening already, with some species flowering two or three weeks earlier than normal."

It’s unfortunate for Charles that because he has spent a quarter of a century campaigning to highlight the threat of climate change causing a global catastrophe, what he says on the subject often no longer makes news.

But although many of his predictions are now routinely ignored by newspapers and broadcasters, I was struck by his latest pronouncement, which brings home to the people of Middle Britain how global warming is going to affect our lives and hobbies.

Yes, of course there are far more devastating effects which, as he says, we are probably already seeing in Britain, such as increased flooding and wetter summers, and in more powerful hurricanes and other extreme weather events elsewhere in the world.

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His decision to spend around five years training and working as a Sea King helicopter pilot with one of the RAF's six UK-based search and rescue flights from January means he will now have a proper job.

I am told it was his idea because he wanted to do something that would allow him to serve in the forces operationally, experience an ordinary person's working life, and allow him to help people in trouble.

Prevented from serving on the front line in his role as an Army officer because of the risk of sending him somewhere like Iraq or Afghanistan, William has faced a frustrating time. Earlier this summer, senior royal aides were admitting that nobody was quite sure what he was going to do with his life.

They have been wondering whether he would follow his father's example and set himself up as a campaigner on controversial issues in addition to undertaking official engagements, such as visiting hospitals and opening schools.

As a future King who may have to wait 30 years to accede to the throne, the 26-year-old Prince was faced with a problem of deciding how to fill his time.

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Ever since he was forced to cut short his tour of duty fighting the Taliban earlier this year, the third-in-line to the throne has been telling anyone who will listen that he wants to return to the country’s war-torn Helmand province.

Whether he will get his way though remains a moot point. He is currently training at the giant Suffield base in Alberta, where he spent time before going to war at the end of last year..

Personally, I think it is right and proper that he should use his skills as a highly-trained lieutenant in the Household Cavalry’s Blues and Royals regiment to do the job for which he is paid.

There should in my view be no special treatment for this brave young man. But somehow I doubt that Harry will be returning to the front line to join Britain’s brilliant soldiers, who are doing the best job possible in an unpopular war.

Senior officers are worried about the damage to their careers if he dies or sustains serious injuries on their watch and will, no doubt, insist that he can only go there again if the media agrees to another blackout on reporting his activities.

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Prince William's girlfriend has let it be known that she is working full-time for her parents' mail order business at the moment after abandoning her part-time job with the high street fashion chain Jigsaw.

Friends say it is nonsense that she is just hanging around waiting to wed William and that she is developing a career with her parents' firm, Party Pieces.

Sorry Kate, it won't wash with the great British public. 

I am sure there are plenty of people who will love you as a Princess simply because you are charming, elegant and beautiful. For some it won't matter that you have never had a proper job.

It certainly worked a treat for Princess Diana, who admitted she was as thick as two short planks and only ever worked as a part-time nursery teacher/nanny, with flexible hours to allow her to go off on dates, before she married into The Firm.

But Britain and the world have moved on a fair bit since Diana became part of the Royal Family in 1981.  Most people under 40 will find it astonishing if William, our future King, ends up

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