Hilary Mantel, award-winning author of historical fiction, elicited raised eyebrows and horrified gasps from the British press on the publication of a
speech that she made at the London Review of Books Lecture earlier this month. The comments that sparked the greatest outrage concerned the Duchess of Cambridge. Amongst other observations, Mantel compared Kate to a robot or mannequin, who "appeared to have been designed by a committee and built by craftsmen, with a perfect plastic smile and the spindles of her limbs hand-turned and gloss-varnished". As a self-confessed fan of the Duchess, I admit that there were points in the speech that I strongly disagreed with - I do not believe that the ideal of Kate is a construct to the extent that Mantel suggests. However, after I finished reading, I found
this BBC news article in which David Cameron condemns the author's comments.
