Now James joins the Bucklebury bunch

THEY’VE put the pretty Berkshire village of Bucklebury on the map due to their Royal connections. But are the Middleton family hoping to make the area a mini-fiefdom of their own? I only ask because the Duchess of Cambridge’s brother James has just snapped up the family’s fourth property in the village – a £1.45 million pad to share with his fiancee, Alizee Thevenet, both pictured right. It’s a four-bedroom Grade II listed period farmhouse with beams and leaded windows in a village on the Bucklebury fringes. It means Kate’s family are all now near-neighbours, with parents Carole and Michael living in a £4.7 million Georgian manor house in the village, while her sister Pippa recently bought Bucklebury Farm Park, a petting zoo which is a favourite of f Prince George, Princess Charlotte and d Prince Louis.

James’s move means the Middletons own three properties in the area, having sold one. The original family home, the £1.5 million Oak Acre, where Kate and William met in secret during breaks from St Andrews University, was sold a few years after they married.

Mind you, tongues may well be wagging in the village about how James has managed to afford his new home, as two-and-a-half years ago his novelty marshmallow company Boomf was posting losses of £3 million.

Happily, business is now boomfing and he seems to have found his feet after meeting Alizee, a wealthy French financier.