Bit harsh from Hilary Mantel?

I think if it generates discussion on attitudes to women in (parts of) the press, then it is a good thing, absent.

I don't understand why she feltit necessary to discuss the Duchess of Cambridge at all. Does she not realise that Kate is a living, breathing, feeling person?

Mild autism springs to mind.

Nothing deep, just that in a lecture about the position of royal women- fair enough given Ann Boleyn - it isn't necessary to bring Duchess of Cambridge into it. Unless you are looking for a wider audience than the TLS would normally get you. And although I agree with everyone who has said Mantell wasn't actually attacking the DoC, she's a clever woman and it must have crossed her mind how the popular meeja would present it.

She was attacking the Duchess. You can't get away from that.

People clever in some ways are often as thick as the proverbial two short planks in other ways.

I am very sad that it is autism that springs into you mind JO8.
I also can't begin to imagine why.
Lily I think the contemporary analogy was perfectly justified in a serious article and lecture, which is what this was. I read the original in the LRB and never even thought that the media would distort like this. Even if she did realise, she might have felt that it was worth it to get some proper discussion going about the way the media and public can treat women in general and royal wives and mothers in particular.

I think that the whole point of her speech, as has been said on here, was really about how the press /society , now and historically,reduce royal women to clothes horses and breeding machines and do not value them as living people with their own ideas, skills and competencies.

I think it is amusing that all those GNs who have been hoping & speculating for news of a royal baby (? reducing Kate to a producer of heir) and the papers who always make comments on her appearance, speculate as to the reason for her thinness/fatness, hairstyle etc etc are the ones cherry picking form Mantel's speech and getting aerated in a faux defence of Kate!

She was knocking the mediation of royal women not the women themselves!

Sorry Mamie. She just doesn't seem very good at picking up on other people's feelings.

She could not pick up on them until they had them! Or do you mean prior to this storm in a teacup?

I agree with mamie that what Mantel said wasn't aimed at Kate but at Kate's position in our society. I also think Kate is perfectly capable of coping with an intelligent article without feeling offended, and if she does feel offended, that's just tough. Writers are allowed to write things that might offend someone. In fact, you can bet your bottom dollar that someone will take offence whatever is said about Kate. Kate must know that a certain thick-skinnedness is part of her job requirements.

I meant "pick up what Kate's feelings" might have been.

Who else is beginning to wonder if jings is one of those "minor royals" one hears about?

Serious writers should not have to concern themselves with what people's feelings 'might' be when their stuff is read and deliberately misinpterpreted. #mentalstifling

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/kate-middleton/9880185/Duchess-of-Cambridge-the-perfect-royal-consort.html everyone is getting in on the act.

I don't know how you can say "misread". It's obviously aimed at Kate personally. Mantel is a notoriety seeking, self serving bitch.

Agree with you there Bags

... do you really think we should be saying Your Ladyship to jings?

Yes. Took you long enough.

just off to sort this Mantlepiece woman out

OMG.... your majesty!

Don't pander (or do I mean panda?) to her, ej

Isn't a pander a pimp?

Jings would never be a minor anything! She's more likely to be HM

'Pander' think the meaning might be sofened a bit if its a verb rather than a noun.

Duchess shock. Horsemeat horror. Meanwhile Stafford hospital conveniently forgotten.

Nifty work by Cameron then, getting embroiled in the duchess story .

Or maybe he just had no choice as part of Sadie Smith's Triumvirate of Evil.