Hilary Mantel, Kate Middleton, and Royal Bodies today In a moment on the Drip we'll have the best of the Twitter reaction. Here, for the time being, are some of the choice quotes from Mantel's lecture. Quite cutting, don't you think? Kate Middleton, as she was, appeared to have been designed by a committee and built by craftsmen, with a perfect plastic smile and the spindles of her limbs hand-turned and gloss-varnished. What does Kate read? It's a question. Kate seems to have been selected for her role of princess because she was irreproachable: as painfully thin as anyone could wish, without quirks, without oddities, without the risk of the emergence of character. [She looks like] a jointed doll on which certain rags are hung. Presumably Kate was designed to breed in some manners.