BACK in November 2010 a beaming Prince William and Kate Middleton announced their engagement, and it seemed many people in our country suddenly remembered we had a royal family.

Not only that, but some of them were also gilded with youth, outdoor pursuits’ tans, and hope for the future.

Shortly afterwards I was made royal correspondent for the magazine I was working for, and have spent the past three years charting the new territory which the triumvirate of William, Kate and Harry are forging.

Last summer my Kate biography was published. I had just broken my ankle thanks to a pair of six inch wedge heels, and made numerous trips to London in a wheelchair, so I’m sticking with flats over the next couple of weeks before my Prince Harry biography comes out.

Salisbury and the surrounding area has many royal connections.

The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh visited during the Diamond Jubilee tour, resulting in an amusing picture of them on a dais with Prince Philip's head chopped off by an awning.

Prince Charles has climbed the cathedral spire, William and Harry launched the wounded military recovery centre at Tedworth House in Tidworth, and Kate has visited East Knoyle as part of her work with the charity Action on Addiction.

However, my favourite local royal connection is a little older.

In the 16th century Queen Elizabeth I gave Sir Walter Raleigh the Manor House in Downton, and on one occasion decided to visit.

He had never lived in the ramshackle property, so it's said he sailed a ship down the Avon, using the mast to build the spiral staircase and the hull to reinforce the roof.

When I was little my grandmother was housekeeper at the Manor House, so I grew up playing in and around the stately home.

The owners liked having my brother and I around, so we would regale them with tales of school, creeping through 'the big room', where in 1857 a painting of Sir Walter Raleigh was found behind the Tudor oak panelling. The painting now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery, and to see it always makes me smile.