Harry Potter knocked off top spot after two years

Harry Potter has finally met his match, not in the form of the evil Lord Voldemort but in the less formidable shape of the sort of minor European royal beloved of Hello! magazine.

A Harry Potter book has held the top spot in the children's bestselling paperback list for two and a half years. But now J K Rowling's bespectacled wizard has been usurped.

Princess Diaries 4: Mia Goes Fourth, the latest in Meg Cabot's Princess Diaries series, tells of Mia Thermopolis, a 14-year-old from Manhattan who is transformed into the crown princess of a small European principality.

It managed to beat Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire after Nielsen BookScan, which tracks book sales, ruled that £1 Harry Potter books for charity could not be counted.