Author Mantel slams 'plastic' Kate

Double Booker Prize winning author Hilary Mantel labelled the Duchess of Cambridge a "machine-made" princess "designed by committee". Mantel, 60, also accused the 31-year-old princess of being a "shop window mannequin" with a "plastic smile". She said Kate had neither the personality of Princess Diana, mother of her husband Prince William, nor the presence of historical heavyweight Anne Boleyn, who features heavily in Mantel's decorated novel Wolf Hall. Mantel called Boleyn "a power player, a clever and determined woman" and highlighted Diana's "human awkwardness and emotional incontinence" that "showed in her every gesture". Kate, on the other hand, had gone from being a "jointed doll on which certain rags are hung" to someone whose "only point and purpose" was to have children, according to the novelist. Mantel is the only woman to win the Man Booker Price twice, claiming the first in 2009 for Wolf Hall, the opening part of her trilogy about Henry VIII's adviser Thomas Cromwell. The second installment, Bring Up The Bodies, won the award last year.