Just as I was getting all hot under the collar over the ludicrous accusations being levelled at Hilary Mantel over her supposed ‘attack’ on the Duchess of Cambridge (how many of those pumped for soundbites about this on the one o’clock news today had actually read Mantel’s article? I suspect the answer to that question would be a big fat zero) and thinking I really should say something about the wilful misuse of Mantel’s words (are Tory MPs deliberately stupid, or just made that way?) author of Angelmaker Nick Harkaway has done it for me!
What Mantel’s article proves – if proof were needed – is that she is one of our very finest writers, and in her prime. The piece is elegant, rapier-sharp, and presents a powerfully exhilarating indictment of the way certain sections of the media feed off the social and political hypocrisy they should be decrying. Thank God for writers like Mantel, brave enough to speak their mind and to do so with such enviable style. The LRB piece Royal Bodies is a joy.
Read it here.
Update: I take issue with Hadley Freeman’s excellent piece in The Guardian this morning on one point only. When she says that ‘if, say, Martin Amis said anything vaguely similar to Mantel’s comments about Kate, he would not have received anywhere near the same amount of publicity’, she is (sadly) wrong. Perhaps Hadley underestimates the media establishment’s obsession with Martin Amis. What you can bet your house on though is that at no point in this theoretical coverage would mention have been made of Amis’s weight, the clothes he wears or his ability to sire children.
Shame on you, Independent – appalling sexism in the Daily Mail is a daily commonplace, but in this piece here a newspaper that supposedly prides itself on informed journalism does wrong to both parties on so many levels it would take me all morning to properly enumerate them.