Many people are asking me to comment on the forthcoming royal birth. The moment there's a baby, I'll try and post a full chart reading.

Meanwhile, I can only tackle some theoretical questions. Questions, for example, like 'If you're supposed to be able to predict the future, why can't you just tell us when the baby is coming?' But I'm an astrologer, not a psychic. Give me a date, a place and a time of birth and I'll give you a reliable reading. But without that information,my guess is as good as yours. Indeed, yours is probably better. You, for example, think it's going to be a girl, don't you! Even if I secretly thought you were right, I'd dare not say so. How I envy your abilty to speak freely without risking your reputation!

I bet you suspect too, that this child is destined to enjoy a long, happy, stable future. Me too... but there are certain dates and times which may give rise to a much more challenging life map.

I'll be having to pick my words very carefully if this child arrives on one particular night soon. I won't say more though, because I'd hate the word to get back to Kate and put her under even more pressure.

So here, instead, are some 'cosmic constants' that will apply whenever this little bundle of regal joy is born. She or he will have both Sun and Mars in the Sign of The Bull. This will confer qualities of deep determination and fierce loyalty - similar to those of another royal Taurean, Great Grandmama Elizabeth! Yet the position of the fast changing Moon, at the moment of birth, could either support those Taurean tendencies or challenge them. This, in a royal birth chart, might signal either a life of comparative ease or a future full of strife and struggle.

What happens if, into even the happiest and most well adjusted family, a potential source of stress is born? My predecessors might have seen such a child as a 'malefic influence' who could unwittingly draw the whole family into drama and conflict.

John Dee, court astrologer and alchemist to Queen Elizabeth I, would have seen the timing of this arrival as deeply significant. If the planetary picture was untoward, it might undermine the future of the monarchy. He'd have been watching this Paddington pageant with close interest.

In his honour, and because of the potential impact that a royal birth chart can have on the destiny of an entire nation, I'm doing the same.