Strong defence of royal assistant from reporter (8)
I believe the answer is:
palisade
'strong defence' is the definition.
'palisade' can be an answer for 'defence' (palisade is a kind of defence). I'm not sure about the 'strong' bit.
'royal assistant from reporter' is the wordplay.
I cannot really understand how this works, but
'assistant' could be 'pa' (personal assistant) and 'pa' is located in the answer.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).
'of' is the link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for palisade that I've seen before include "Stockade" , "Fence consisting of stakes" , "Fence made of stakes" , "means of defence" , "fencing" .)