In taking their adopted children away from poverty, they actually drew them into a film-star fantasy lifestyle where all the natural rhythms of childhood are absent, and now, there is no doubt that Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's split will have the most profound effect on them. Indeed, some will conclude it is a rum business to adopt several youngsters from all over the world, and then divorce so they are deprived of a stable nuclear family, writes RICHARD KAY. ...read

Not long ago, the writing was on the wall for Kensington Palace, writes RICHARD KAY. The deaths of Princess Diana (right, number four) and the Queen’s sister, Princess Margaret, led to courtiers drawing up a plan to pension off the remaining royal residents and mothball the place before turning it into a permanent home for the vast Royal Collection of artworks and other treasures. Retirement packages were prepared as thank-yous for the Gloucesters and the Kents for their years of public service, with help to move out. Yet nearly 15 years on, the Duke of Kent (top right, number two, with the Duchess), 80, his brother Prince Michael (right, number five), 74, and the Duke of Gloucester (right, number six), 71, show no sign of retiring and remain full-time working members of the Royal Family. They also continue to live in the rambling warren of 17th and 18th-century rooms that the Duke of Windsor disparagingly referred to as ‘the Aunt Heap’, a home for supposedly hard-up royal relatives. And so Kensington Palace is flourishing. It is home to Prince William (right, number seven, with his wife Kate), the Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry (right, number three) — and from next year, we learnt this week, Princess Eugenie (right, number one) will be moving in. ...read