Michael Cole

Wherever you go in the world, there are always two things that are never cheap: lobsters and lawyers. The British taxpayer has learned this painful reality as it picks up a bill of more than half a million pounds for defending the government’s case against Prince Harry. The Duke of Sussex has brought a case against the Home Office over its removal of automatic high-level police protection for him and his family when they are in Britain. So far, £180,000 has been paid in fees to leading barristers to defend the Home Office case. Another £320,000 has gone to the government’s own legal department, comprising the Attorney General, the Solicitor General and Treasury Counsel and all their staff.

The Princess of Wales has been photographed for the first time since she was hospitalised earlier this year. But while the picture, which shows Catherine in a car driven by her mother Carole Middleton, is splashed across the American celebrity website TMZ, it won't be appearing in British newspapers. So why is the British press so scrupulous, so abstemious and so responsible – things they could never have been accused of in the Wild West days of the old Fleet Street – when their American cousins still shoot from the hip when it comes to publishing paparazzi pictures of the Royals?