Hilary Mantel was made a Dame at Buckingham Palace on Friday, and afterwards revealed that comments that she made towards the Duchess of Cambridge in 2013 were taken "out of context". The award-winning author, whose Wolf Hall recently debuted to critical acclaim on BBC was speaking after the investiture ceremony, which was led by Duchess Kate's father-in-law Prince Charles.
"I certainly was [misrepresented], yes," she told ITV's Duncan Golestani. "Two sentences taken out of an hour-long lecture and the meaning turned around 100%."
Hilary Mantel shows off her investiture
The booker prize winner called Duchess Kate as having no personality in 2013, and added that she was a "shop window mannequin".
The now 62-year-old also suggested that Kate had gone from being "a jointed doll on which certain rags are hung" to a woman whose "only point and purpose" was to give birth to heirs. She also added that Kate "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".
Hilary has won the Booker prize twice - in 2009 and 2012 - and her trilogy of novels, the first of which is Wolf Hall, following the life of Henry VIII's adviser Thomas Cromwell, has been widely critically acclaimed.
Hilary Mantel
Bring Up The Bodies was released in 2014, while the third does not yet have a publication date.
Hilary revealed that Prince Charles, who awarded her the honour, had seen Wolf Hall and was "very much" enjoying it. She also admitted that she doesn't have finishing date for the third book, adding: "I haven't got a finishing date yet because I've been very busy with the theatre versions and novels are unpredictable anyway."
The BBC six-part adaptation currently stars Damian Lewis, Mark Rylance, and Claire Foy.