Award winning author Hilary Mantel has launched a scathing attack on the Duchess of Cambridge, describing her as “designed by committee”, in a lecture at the British Museum.
The 60-year-old author, who won the Man Booker Prize in 2009 and 2012, compared Kate to Anne Boleyn, Marie Antoinette and Princess Diana during the lecture entitled Undressing Anne Boleyn.
In it, she said: “It’s rather that I saw Kate becoming a jointed doll on which certain rags are hung.
“In those days she was a shop-window mannequin, with no personality of her own, entirely defined by what she wore.
“These days she is a mother-to-be, and draped in another set of threadbare attributions … her only point and purpose being to give birth.”
She also described the Duchess as having a “perfect plastic smile” and said her first official portrait, unveiled last month, revealed “her eyes are dead and she wears the strained smile of a woman who really wants to tell the painter to b***** off”.
The lecture for the London Review of Books was given on February 4, but the full version of her speech will be published in the latest edition of the review on Thursday.
Mantel, author of Thomas Cromwell novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies, said Kate was not like Anne Boleyn who was a “power player, a clever and determined woman”.
It comes as the Duchess will show off her baby bump for the first time when she visits a project for women recovering from substance dependence.
The 31-year-old will visit Hope House, a project run by Action On Addiction of which she is a patron.
The engagement in Clapham will be the Duchess’ first solo engagement of 2013.
St James’ Palace has also announced the details of her next public engagement on March 5 when she will visit the Lincolnshire town of Grimsby.
Sky News