Bit harsh from Hilary Mantel?

Glad to have helped. Apparently Anne Enwright had the same problem when she wrote an article about the McCanns in the LRB in 2007. The same newspapers stirred it all up as an attack on McCanns themselves when she was writing about how the media makes us feel we know and can comment on people in the public eye.
I am enchanted by the notion that people might rush to subscribe to the LRB as some kind of sensationalist paper. They will be in for a bit of a shock!

Thank you Mamie, for the article. I was in Spain and the catty comments were reported on Spanish TV. I had also paid money for the Cromwell books on my Kindle and wondered how to get money back as I no longer wished to read this nasty woman's work. However I now realise it is just the press making mischief. Free speech?? They should be gagged.

I think most of us have done, yearofthetiger.

The author is not being a bitch. If she is disparaging about anybody, it is not Kate or the Royal Family, but rather the media's and the Public's treatment of royalty. She is pointing out that the notion of royalty and how we expect them to behave can dehumanise them. Monarchy having lost it's original point in the scheme of things has been reduced to entertainment;an exhibit. Don't we say how they help the economy and bring the tourists in. This article is satirical, but please read it properly before condemning the writer.

I do hope that Kate herself has had the sense to read the original article and put the insensitive remarks in context.

Madrigal I too have some sympathy for Hilary Mantel but am also aware that all this sound and fury signifying nothing has, in fact, massively increased sales of her books.

Mamie, you're right. It's usually unwise to take what the media says as the honest and unvarnished truth. It's at best an approximation of the truth - their angle on it is often purposely to ensure it raises the ire of the public - great headlines is the name of the game. I feel a bit sorry for Hilary Mantel but she's been round the block a few times so I suppose she won't be too surprised at anything she reads about herself in the press. And I speak as an ex-journalist!

Yes, thanks Anno, the Gaby Wood article in the Telegraph is excellent. How interesting that they published one of her original remarks and it passed without comment at the time.

This is a link to the current LRB issue.
www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n04/contents
I can hardly believe that people would buy it as a sensationalist read. Is it that widely available on bookstalls? I thought it was mostly subscription.

bags I am so sorry that you felt targeted.

The Gaby Wood article, I mean.

<much chuckling>. I did enjoy that. Can you tell?

The flapjack is in the oven. #yousneededtoknowthat

anno and Gaby Wood, thank you from the heart!

Like it, grumppa . Same behaviour from both types of publication, then? #who'd'athunkit?

Will read your link, anno, but there's a severe flapjack shortage in my house at the moment that I need to remedy.

a very sensible and perceptive article which puts the whole debate in perspective.

Right on, grumppa!

Mamie, the editorial decision to highlight the 'Kate' content on the front cover of LRB positively invited other media, and chance viewers of bookstalls, to latch on to that aspect of HM's long, occasionally odd and rambling, but quite interesting piece. You say that context matters, but LRB, with or without HM's consent, took the 'Kate issue' out of context.

You also say, quite rightly, that the tabloid press wrote what they did to see their "sales go up". Isn't that just what LRB was up to?

I commented above (this thread is getting very looong) that what Mantel said was seized on by the meeja and misrepresented. She's a clever woman and when I used the word ' innocent' I meant naive, not fully aware of the possible consequences of her speech. Her lecture was misinterpreted and misrepresented but that doesn't automatically make her views valid or palatable. She has books to sell and the good opinion of the bien-pensant to maintain.

Hear, hear, mamie!

#truthwilloutorsomethinglikethat

I wouldn't be so presumptuous as to guess at what she thought might happen. I think she would probably note that the tabloid press had wilfully misunderstood, taken remarks out of context, omitted all the words like "seems" and "appears", which tell us that she is talking about other people's perceptions of KM and removed the detailed historical background. They then print a story designed to create a furore and rub their hands as their sales go up. Oh and lots of people miss the point about the media using the royal family for its own murky agenda. Neat.

It was pre coffee, jings, and a bit daft. So unlike me, eh?

I meant about the sanity thing btw

Did wonder for a minute there Bags!

Who the flip regards the Duch of C as a close personal friend. #stuckupandsnotty #again