Mantel calls Middleton a 'mannequin' during lecture

LONDON, Feb. 19 (UPI) -- Novelist Hilary Mantel described Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, as a "mannequin" with no personality, during a recent lecture at the British Museum.

Middleton married Prince William, son of Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana, in April 2011. The royal couple announced in December the duchess is pregnant with her first child.

"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 appears precision-made, machine-made, so different from Diana whose human awkwardness and emotional incontinence showed in her every gesture," The Daily Record reported Mantel said two weeks ago during a lecture organized by the London Review of Books.

Mantel said she has seen fashion icon Middleton become a "jointed doll on which certain rags are hung."

"[Kate] was a shop-window mannequin, with no personality of her own, entirely defined by what she wore," the Record said the British author railed.

"These days she is a mother-to-be, and draped in another set of threadbare attributions. Once she gets over being sick, the press will find that she is radiant. They will find that this young woman's life until now was nothing, her only point and purpose being to give birth."

Mantel, 60, is a double Booker Prize winner. Her novels include "Bring Up the Bodies" and "Wolf Hall."