Hilary Mantel has woken up to something of a firestorm after a long speech she recently made about the royal family and society's relationship with them was interpreted as an "astonishing and venomous attack" on the Duchess of Cambridge.
The headlines did not pull punches: "a plastic princess designed to breed", read the Daily Mail, which lambasted the "Booker prizewinner's venomous attack on Kate"; "plastic princess slur", said the Sun headline, which described Mantel's speech as a "bizarre rant".