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Julie Burchill writes:
Reading Hilary Mantel’s comments on the Duchess of Cambridge, I felt like a front-row spectator at a boxing match setting Muhammad Ali at the height of his powers against Victoria Beckham at her most undernourished.
Mantel is a woman of such accomplishment that she makes other writers look like grunting apes, and she wields her words like scalpels. The late Kate Middleton studied history of art at university â€" the modern equivalent of flower arranging for girls whose mothers are keen for them to marry well.
Mantel’s criticism was biting. She declared Kate to be a ‘machine-made’ princess, ‘designed by committee and built by craftsmen’, a ‘shop window mannequin’ with a ‘perfect plastic smile and the spindles of her limbs hand-turned and gloss-varnished’!
When we compare Kate, seen here at Hope House today, with the late Princess of Wales, she comes across as a very prissy princess indeed
Kate should take note: Diana managed to move beyond glitz and showbiz to find a meaningful role for herself within the Firm
Biting criticism: Mantel described Kate as a 'shop window mannequin' with a 'perfect plastic smile and the spindles of her limbs hand-turned and gloss-varnished'
Ouch! Shouldn’t sisters be sticking together, rather than sticking it to each other?
Nevertheless â€" and I’m sorry to say it â€" I can’t help but see Mantel’s point.
It’s hard not to warm to Kate, the recent descendant of coalminers who has the sort of easy public charm that we have always been told must be innate â€" an idea that oafish royals such as Airmiles Andy entirely disprove.
Yet if the public mood towards her is not to sour, as Mantel’s comments appear to indicate, she needs to take a leaf out of her late mother-in-law Diana’s book.
For Diana, even though she was uneducated and unloved by her husband, managed to move beyond glitz and showbiz to find a meaningful role for herself within the Firm, as patron of more than 100 charities during her lifetime. Kate must now move beyond those same cliches, away from a future as nothing more than a clothes-horse, and find her own niche.
Stepford Wife: It's as though Prince William somehow had Kate constructed so that she was just enough like his mother for him and the nation to love, but not enough like insecure Diana for her to be hurt
Kate's work for the charity Action On Addiction is a good start, but she has so far only taken on four charities - far fewer than Diana
For when we compare Kate with the late Princess of Wales, she comes across as a very prissy princess indeed.
Her relatively humble origins have probably made her malleable and somewhat in awe of her in-laws, which can come across as eager-to-please simpering.
Although Diana was just 20 when she married Charles, she had already shown more spirit than Kate did when she walked down the aisle at Westminster Abbey at 29. That Diana worked variously as a cleaner and nanny as a teenager revealed her work ethic, and that she refused to ‘come out’ as a debutante despite being the daughter of an earl was a welcome flash of rebellion.
By contrast, that ‘Waity Katy’ meekly bided her time before marrying her prince by dabbling in the family business, Party Pieces, makes us feel that she lacks backbone.
Diana's pluck meant she refused to come out as a debutant, and managed to make a place for her self despite being uneducated, and unloved by her husband
The Duchess of Cambridge lacks the spirit shown by Diana
While Mantel wrote of Diana that ‘human awkwardness and emotional incontinence showed in her every gesture’, I disagree. Diana was confident and calculating. And part of her lovableness, especially for women, was the way she could appear brittle and bitchy when she felt herself wronged. I can’t imagine Kate revealing such a fiery streak.
It’s as though Prince William somehow had Kate constructed (or chose her, if you don’t buy Mantel’s Stepford Wife theory) so that she was just enough like his mother for him and the nation to love, but not enough like insecure Diana for her to be hurt.
Though it must be said that what mostly hurt William’s mother was William’s father, whose affair with Camilla Parker Bowles never gave their marriage a chance. It’s worth remembering that the man who has reinvented himself as a caring, sharing ‘people’s prince’ once used to sneer at his young wife ‘Diana the martyr!’ when she visited Aids patients â€" and even when she chose to use public planes rather than private jets. What a pampered poltroon he is!
What a lovely recognition of what an easy ride her husband has had in his military service it would be if Kate became champion of the thousands of ex-soldiers driven on to the streets
Mantel was quite right to say that female royals were 'at the most basic?.?.?.?breeding stock, collections of organs'
Though Kate seems unlikely to be as popular as Diana was for that brief, shining moment between her betrayal and her demise, it seems unlikely that she will be as troubled, either. She started from a safe place â€" a happy, self-made home. Diana’s childhood was a place of darkness in which she saw her maternal grandmother testify against her mother so that the richest parent â€" her father, Lord Althorp â€" could get custody of the children, an act of wickedness straight out of Daphne du Maurier.
Kate has never been shy â€" compare the way Diana suffered agonies when the sun shone through her skirt in the early days, with Kate parading down a student fashion runway in her lingerie. She is Diana Lite â€" but Diana Dark was what made the dead princess so compulsive, and the complexity Kate appears to lack could mean that she is only ever remembered as one of the House of Windsor’s plus-ones.
What mostly hurt Diana was William's father, whose affair with Camilla Parker Bowles never gave their marriage a chance
It is hard to recall now the impact Diana made with her charity work- here she is seen walking near mine field in Huambo
Diana was a fashion icon but she rightly saw this as the icing on the cake of her public life
While Mantel is right that Kate appears ‘gloss-varnished’, it is a mistake to equate good grooming with a weak will. It takes a lot of determination to stay that thin in one’s 30s.
And I don’t believe Kate is as devoid of personality as her public image suggests. She appeared to be an equal, at least, in the relationship when she and Prince William gave their engagement interview. He said they had ‘a really good laugh’ â€" and asked if she’d really had a poster of the prince on her bedroom wall at university, she answered: ‘He wishes! No, it was the Levi’s guy.’
It would be nice to see that side of her again. For too long Windsor men have been sucked up to by women, and look what a bunch of ocean-going halfwits they have generally turned out to be.
And this is the nub: for Mantel was quite right to say that female royals were ‘at the most basic?.?.?.?breeding stock, collections of organs’ â€" ugly words, but she is dealing with an extremely ugly upper-class mentality which, in the case of the Prince and Princess of Wales, saw a suitable young virgin selected as an ambulatory incubator while her husband, duty done, carried on playing Hide the Duchy Original Sausage with a woman he would never breed with.
Although Kate seems unlikely to be as popular as Diana was in her heyday, surely her advisers should start planning so she is identified with a bigger cause than helping affluent designers enjoy a rush on whatever dress she has worn recently
Kate is pregnant now, of course, and has taken on just four charities â€" far fewer than Diana’s 100. Surely Kate’s advisers should be planning a more solid future for her, so she is identified with a bigger cause than helping affluent designers enjoy a rush on whatever dress she has worn recently.
Diana was a fashion icon but she rightly saw this as the icing on the cake of her public life. When she gave up her ‘pretty’ patronages towards the end of her life, she said: ‘How can I be a patron of a ballet company when people are dying?’ shortly before auctioning her iconic dresses to raise funds for the few serious charities she held dear.
Yes, Kate’s work for the charity Action On Addiction is a good start â€" raising money to tackle self-inflicted illnesses is bolder than fundraising for cancer, for example â€" but too mainstream to mark her out as a trailblazer. It’s hard to recall now the impact that Diana had when she insisted on getting up close and personal with Aids and leprosy sufferers â€" precisely because she, single-handedly, took away the sting of these issues.
What a lovely recognition of what an easy ride her husband has had in his military service it would be if Kate became champion of the thousands of ex-soldiers driven on to the streets and into madness and alcoholism by the trauma they suffered while serving their country â€" the country of which she now has the ear, and part of the heart.
It’s a really good, almost shocking, feeling when the people we are meant to look up to turn out to be people we actually can look up to. Failing this, we will continue simply to look at them â€" with all the disappointment of a buyer who feels he has been sold an expensive dud â€" in the way that has led to Hilary Mantel’s savage, but not entirely unfair, assessment of poor shiny, smiley Kate.
A.N. WILSON argues this is just a bitter salvo
Hilary Mantel, a bestselling historical novelist known for her extremely long stories about the reign of Henry VIII, has been wielding her axe in a different direction.
Rather than sending Anne Boleyn or the king’s exceptionally intelligent chancellor, Sir Thomas More, to have their heads chopped off on Tower Green â€" Mantel’s usual day job â€" she has turned her malicious attention to the Duchess of Cambridge.
In a venomously personal attack, she has described the amiable Kate as ‘personality free’; she has scorned her ‘plastic smile’ and accused her of being a ‘shop window mannequin’.
Warm reception: After being slated as 'plastic' by Hilary Mantel, Kate received huge cheers when she arrived at Hope House in South London today
Glowing: The Duchess of Cambridge showed off her healthy complexion today after recovering from severe morning sickness
I’d be the first to say that writers should be allowed to say what they like. And if the Royal Family expect our affection and adulation, they should surely be prepared to accept criticism when they make chumps of themselves. Why then should we feel shocked by Mantel’s malice?
I suppose it is the unfairness. The sheer bloody unfairness of what she has said.
Unfair: Hilary Mantel said the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge should not complain about invasion of privacy when pictures are taken of them on private holidays as a 'royal body exists to be looked at'
Unfair: It would be a cheap jibe to suggest that having spent the past ten years weaving fantasies about women becoming queens, Mantel almost imagines she is a queen and so might see Kate as a sort of rival
If a member of the Royal Family shoots their mouth off, or gets into an embarrassing scrape, then it is obvious that there will be a hue and cry. Why can’t they imitate the Queen and be discreet, keep their mouths shut, keep out of trouble, just go around smiling and waving and being pleasant to people?
But when Kate Middleton behaves like a textbook ideal royal, what happens? She finds herself under attack for being plastic and being like a shop dummy.
Kate visits the kitchens at Hope House residential centre today: If Mantel wishes the monarchy to continue, she should be glad we have a healthy and charming young woman prepared to take on the job
Plastic? Mantel described Kate as being personality free and having a plastic smile
Attack: Author Hilary Mantel called the Duchess of Cambridge a 'shop window mannequin' who was 'designed by a committee'
The fact that she has not been a source of embarrassment â€" as, unfortunately, some royal wives and husbands so often are â€" is, you might have thought, a cause for celebration rather than disappointment.
And it simply is not true that, because she is discreet, Kate is a sort of robot.
To date, she seems to have been a near-perfect royal wife. She does not show off or invite us to share her pain, like Diana did, or make an idiot of herself.
Beautiful: Kate is stunning, likeable, discrete and has married a very popular prince, far from the 'power player, a clever and determined woman' with 'dead eyes' that Mantel describesÂ
At the same time, when she performs some tedious public engagement, she does so with aplomb, giving every appearance of enthusiasm. She is patently blessed with an amiable disposition â€" which is what the embittered novelist would call being ‘personality free’ â€" and she is instantaneously likeable.
No robot: Kate may be discreet and have avoided embarrassing scrapes, but that doesn't merit an attack of such nature
Wielding her axe: Hilary Mantel, though a remarkable woman, has led a reclusive life, living largely in her own strange world of violently cruel history
She is beautiful (not with ‘dead eyes’, as Mantel claims) and has married a very popular prince, who seems to have many of the good qualities of both his parents but few of their faults. And now they are going to have a baby â€" which, if you are a monarchist, is surely very, very good news.
I am a monarchist, who has sometimes written harshly about individual members of the Royal Family. I suspect Mantel is also a monarchist. So I wonder why she should have chosen to attack a person who, as far as we can discern, has done no harm to anyone.
Enthusiastic: When she performs some tedious public engagement, Kate does so with aplomb
In her writings about herself, Mantel, now aged 60, has described how she found storytelling about royal personages to be a sort of therapy in the midst of her own dreadful, tragic misfortunes.
From the onset of her late teens, she has told us, she has suffered terrible pain. After a decade of vomiting, writhing in pain and being accused of having some form of mental illness, she was diagnosed with endometriosis, a rare condition involving the womb.
Prepared for the job: Kate Middleton, in falling in love with Prince William and marrying him, has been brave enough to leave privacy behind her
In her 20s, she underwent surgery and had her womb and ovaries removed, as well as part of her bladder and bowels. She has also told how painful sex is a symptom of endometriosis.
Such experiences would have knocked most people for six. But this remarkable woman has led a reclusive life, living largely in her own strange world of violently cruel history.
Her favourite historical moments appear to be ones when heads roll â€" either in the French Revolution, or in this country’s 16th century.
The sales figures for her books, the accumulation of prizes (the Man Booker Prize was awarded to her twice, and she has also won the Costa Prize) speak for themselves. No one denies that Hilary Mantel is a superb historical novelist, albeit one with a twisted judgment of history.
Any writer looking at the story of Britain in the 16th century and searching for a hero might feel spoilt for choice. They might have settled on Thomas More, who was the most brilliant Chancellor of England, the wisest lawyer and the most saintly public servant this country ever had. But to Mantel, More is a villain.
She might have chosen Francis Drake, who circumnavigated the globe, or the explorer Sir Walter Raleigh.
But no. Hilary Mantel chose the closest this country ever got to producing a Stalinist thug in public office: Thomas Cromwell, a cynical time-server who, as Henry VIII’s chief minister, was responsible for the destruction of the beautiful abbeys and monasteries.
Mantel contrasts the Duchess of Cambridge with Henry’s second wife Anne Boleyn, a ‘power player, a clever and determined woman’.
Here, gentle reader, our historical romancer is surely taking the mickey.
We all enjoy Hilary Mantel’s writings when she is imagining Anne Boleyn plotting against Henry VIII, or the beastly Cromwell plotting against almost everyone, with the inevitable arrests and brave walks to the axe-man’s block.
But surely there is no one in Britain, outside the fevered brain of Hilary Mantel, who believes that Prince William is married to someone like the second wife of Henry VIII?
Kate’s father-in-law, Prince Charles, regularly gets rapped over the knuckles if he so much as writes to a government minister about wind farms or GM crops. Imagine how we’d all feel if the Duchess of Cambridge was conspiring with the Government.
Necessary: If we want the monarchy to work, we need its principal players to be sane, decent individuals as - so far - Kate and William obviously are. We should not drive them mad by attacking them for no reason
No, Hilary, go back to your home in Budleigh Salterton, Devon, where you famously live in a flat overlooking the sea, and weave your ever-popular, verbose fantasies about the Tudors. And leave our poor modern monarchs to be what we all want them to be â€" public figures who are above the sordid intrigues of political life.
Hilary Mantel has been roundly criticised after she spoke about the Duchess and her views on the Royal family
But before you return to Budleigh Salterton, Hilary, may I offer one brief word of advice? Having bravely told the world of your painful medical condition, you then lowered the barricade and said you did not want journalists prying into your very private life.
That’s fair enough â€" though fairly unrealistic if you also want to come forward in public as a famous writer with ‘views’ on such important matters as the Duchess of Cambridge’s dress sense.
But the truth remains that you are (sort of) a private person, and you are able to retreat to being a private person.
On the other hand, Kate Middleton, in falling in love with Prince William and marrying him, has been brave enough to leave such privacy behind her. As the unpleasant experience of being photographed naked while sunbathing will have taught her, there are no more private moments left.
If we want the monarchy to work, we nee d its principal players to be sane, decent individuals as â€" so far â€" Kate and William obviously are. We should not drive them mad by attacking them for no reason.Â
Of course, Hilary, it would be cruel to suggest that, for all your brilliance and success, you are â€" albeit subconsciously â€" influenced by your own appalling physical ailments, and find difficulty in accepting a healthy, beautiful popular duchess who is about to have a baby.
It would also be a cheap jibe to suggest that having spent the past ten years weaving fantasies about women becoming queens, you almost imagine you are a queen and you might see Kate as a sort of rival.
It would be grossly unfair to say either of those things.
But what you have said about Kate is profoundly unfair.
And if, as I suspect you do, you wish the monarchy to continue, you should be glad we have a healthy and charming young wom an prepared to take on the job.
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