Catherine MOVES CENTRE STAGE

Since becoming the Duchess of Cambridge Il years ago, Catherine's rise has been slow and steady. But as her public role burgeons, the devoted mum of three is turning out to be the House of Windsor's quiet star.

- JULIET RIEDEN

The latest British polls reveal that at 40, the Duchess of Cambridge is the most popular royal after The Queen and just a nose in front of Prince William, who also recently turned 40. Dig into the detail of the YouGov and Ipsos ratings and the rationale behind the voting paints a telling and heartening picture for this future Queen Consort. For while Catherine's media coverage frustratingly continues to labour what she wears and how she looks over what she does, a mere 6 per cent in the Ipsos poll cited the Duchess' style as the reason for holding her in such high regard. Rather, Catherine is seen as a symbol of what is good in Britain, a public figure who those polled feel is genuinely concerned about people in need, and someone who is both modern and a good national representative on the world stage. They're the sort of market research results any politician would kill for!

And while the Duchess rated highly with all ages, the generation who love her most are baby boomers - those born between the end of World War Two and the mid-1960s. This group has observed the full Wills and Kate story in often glaring technicolor. Baby Prince William in his mother's arms on the steps of St Mary's Hospital in London and then in the depths of mourning, walking behind her coffin at age 15. William’s achingly long courtship of university flatmate Kate Middleton, a “regular” girl from England’s Home Counties who he finally married and stood with on those same hospital steps with each of their own three children facing that barrage of photographers, some of whom had plagued his mother.