After discussing various queens in her LRB lecture "Royal Bodies", Hilary Mantel (who had just collected another prize, the Costa book of the year) came to the Duchess of Cambridge. In contrast to Diana ("more royal than the family she joined"), she argued, Kate seemed "a shop window mannequin" apparently "designed by a committee and built by craftsmen, with a perfect plastic smile ... precision-made, machine-made".
Ripped out of context in the Mail as an "astonishing attack" on the nation's darling and heir-bearer, this made for a fine brouhaha, with leader writers, trolls and Messrs Cameron and Miliband doing most of the Mantel-bashing. But the Mail itself staged a debate between Julie Burchill (defending Mantel and calling Kate "Diana Lite") and AN Wilson. Mantel's defenders elsewhere included Sam Leith and Hadley Freeman.
