Go for it Hilary

[french frank]

Well, the actual "news" story was a fortnight's old "rant" by Hilary Mantel about Kate Middleton, allegedly..

After printing the criticisms (notably by David Cameron), the BBC allows space for an 'analysis' by Arts correspondent, David Sillito:

"Hilary Mantel has been accused of describing the Duchess of Cambridge as "a shop window mannequin with no personality of her own". However, read the speech and it's clear she is in reality defending the duchess.

The list of accusations is actually a list of the "threadbare attributions" she says were presented in the press about Kate Middleton.

It is a long speech and its subject is the way royal women have been portrayed and maligned over the centuries. Hilary Mantel says we treat the Royal Family like pandas, staring at them as if they are in a cage.

Her fear is that we become like "spectators at Bedlam. Cheerful curiosity can easily become cruelty. It can easily become fatal".

That word "fatal" is a reference to Princess Diana who, she says, "we" drove to destruction. Her conclusion is that we have now a chance to be different.

She concludes: "I'm not asking for censorship. I'm not asking for pious humbug and smarmy reverence. I'm asking us to back off and not be brutes."

If this is an attack on anyone it is the press not the Duchess of Cambridge." Go for it, Hilary.

I think that's what I've been trying to say for several posts Whatever your views/prejudices about the monarchy/Royal Family, it simply points out that (presumably in order to sell papers and please their masters nowadays) a (largely male(?) band of press people manipulate images, sensationalise and generally bully such women and - however much you may 'despise them' for what they are or represent - it is still male bullies (for the most part) using them for their own purposes.

NB I am not a monarchist. Echoing what has been said above, I don't waste my time on the monarchy and it doesn't waste its time on me.

[scottycelt]

My kids used to have a video called "Ruff and Rosie" , a cartoon thing narrated by Victoria Wood. There was a little gem of wisdom in there.
She asks " Do you spend time worrying about Madonna or Michael Jackson? Well don't, because they're not worrying about you ".
I think this wisdom can be applied to the royals, and others, very reasonably.

The trouble with that, team, is that it can also be applied to football clubs ... ?

Right, time I was outta here!

[teamsaint]

The trouble with that, team, is that it can also be applied to football clubs ... ?

Right, time I was outta here!

absolutely Scotty.
£92 at Arsenal last night apparently !!

[Sir Velo]

Storm in a D cup?

[Nick Armstrong]

Well, the actual "news" story was a fortnight's old "rant" by Hilary Mantel about Kate Middleton, allegedly..

After printing the criticisms (notably by David Cameron), the BBC allows space for an 'analysis' by Arts correspondent, David Sillito:

Thanks FF... I was wondering why this has all blown up now after a speech on 4th February.

It seems to me it's all a depressing and actually almost belief-defying example of fatheads (inc most of the leading news outlets) being hoodwinked by partial and misleading "reporting", a pathetic wave of mistaken, belated "outrage".

[french frank]

It seems to me it's all a depressing and actually almost belief-defying example of fatheads (inc most of the leading news outlets) being hoodwinked by partial and misleading "reporting", a pathetic wave of mistaken, belated "outrage".

Yes the reporting was all part of the same problem. More to do with Leveson than the monarchy.

Apart from anything else, people might have wondered why an author celebrated for her historical fiction would have chosen to deliver a diatribe against KM in a lecture to the London Review of Books. In the context of a thesis about the negative images of 'royal women' throughout history, it makes perfect sense.

[Nick Armstrong]

Yes the reporting was all part of the same problem.

For me, what Sillito says is the real "story" here.

[arancie33]

Collecting my paper this morning, I scanned the others and reckon that 50% had a picture of D of C on the front including one that actually had a red arrow aimed at her tummy and words to the effect of "here it is". On that alone I would say game set and match to Hilary Mantel.

[Julien Sorel]

Apart from anything else, people might have wondered why an author celebrated for her historical fiction would have chosen to deliver a diatribe against KM in a lecture to the London Review of Books. In the context of a thesis about the negative images of 'royal women' throughout history, it makes perfect sense.

Except it isn't really a negative image in the context of how the Royals, the Royal Wedding etc, are choreographed - it's a stereotype. & I'd guess it's still very usual for many media outlets, journalists etc. to adopt the femininity angle: 'stunning in a designer leather jacket and purple boots X scarcely looks like the typical professor of astrophysics' etc. The historical precedents aren't precedents. The situation is entirely different. It's a game without power / political effects.

The problem I have with criticism of media portrayal of the Royals is that's all they are there for: they don't like it when it intrudes or when it's not on their terms but without it they'd (a) have less nothing to do - not less than nothing (b) they need people to find them interesting, they need to be interesting to remain tourist attractions. We've had staged interviews where one male Royal has talked about killing insurgents in Iraq; I'm sure there have been plenty of staged interviews with Kate about her childhood, how she met William, what music she likes. Her sister is famous for being her sister, and that fame is very lucrative. They need the system and on occasion the system destroys them (though I think that would be a problematic description of the Diana phenomenon and her car crash in Paris).

But the truth is they are there to be gawped at. That's their function. That's their job. If they disappeared overnight it wouldn't make the least practical difference to anything (other, maybe, than lowering the chances Homeopathy has in the NHS or allowing a few more mainstream postmodernist architects to get buildings commissioned by rich people / corporations approved).

[amateur51]

Well, the actual "news" story was a fortnight's old "rant" by Hilary Mantel about Kate Middleton, allegedly..

After printing the criticisms (notably by David Cameron), the BBC allows space for an 'analysis' by Arts correspondent, David Sillito:

"Hilary Mantel has been accused of describing the Duchess of Cambridge as "a shop window mannequin with no personality of her own". However, read the speech and it's clear she is in reality defending the duchess.

The list of accusations is actually a list of the "threadbare attributions" she says were presented in the press about Kate Middleton.

It is a long speech and its subject is the way royal women have been portrayed and maligned over the centuries. Hilary Mantel says we treat the Royal Family like pandas, staring at them as if they are in a cage.

Her fear is that we become like "spectators at Bedlam. Cheerful curiosity can easily become cruelty. It can easily become fatal".

That word "fatal" is a reference to Princess Diana who, she says, "we" drove to destruction. Her conclusion is that we have now a chance to be different.

She concludes: "I'm not asking for censorship. I'm not asking for pious humbug and smarmy reverence. I'm asking us to back off and not be brutes."

If this is an attack on anyone it is the press not the Duchess of Cambridge." Go for it, Hilary.

I think that's what I've been trying to say for several posts Whatever your views/prejudices about the monarchy/Royal Family, it simply points out that (presumably in order to sell papers and please their masters nowadays) a (largely male(?) band of press people manipulate images, sensationalise and generally bully such women and - however much you may 'despise them' for what they are or represent - it is still male bullies (for the most part) using them for their own purposes.

NB I am not a monarchist. Echoing what has been said above, I don't waste my time on the monarchy and it doesn't waste its time on me.

The LRB link offers us the opportunity to listen to Hilary Mantel's lecture and just as importantly to hear Director of British Museum Neil MacGregor's introduction in which he reveals why she was asked to give the lecture, the theme's relationship to several royal portaits in the National Portrait Gallery & National Gallery, etc. This is the context and as such it is enlightening.

[amateur51]

But the truth is they are there to be gawped at. That's their function. That's their job. If they disappeared overnight it wouldn't make the least practical difference to anything (other, maybe, than lowering the chances Homeopathy has in the NHS or allowing a few more mainstream postmodernist architects to get buildings commissioned by rich people / corporations approved).

Except that it would require that State to fill the vacuum of the sleight-of-hand hierarchical democracy that we have. There might be a battle for a political President v a figurehead President, etc. Who knows, we might grow up as a nation and become a functioning republic

[amateur51]

She concludes: "I'm not asking for censorship. I'm not asking for pious humbug and smarmy reverence. I'm asking us to back off and not be brutes."

If this is an attack on anyone it is the press not the Duchess of Cambridge." Go for it, Hilary.

I think that's what I've been trying to say for several posts Whatever your views/prejudices about the monarchy/Royal Family, it simply points out that (presumably in order to sell papers and please their masters nowadays) a (largely male(?) band of press people manipulate images, sensationalise and generally bully such women and - however much you may 'despise them' for what they are or represent - it is still male bullies (for the most part) using them for their own purposes.

NB I am not a monarchist. Echoing what has been said above, I don't waste my time on the monarchy and it doesn't waste its time on me.

I'll risk an expression of which we know that french frank is not fond - spot on!

[gradus]

To me its a well written piece and I thought the comments about The Young Duchess pertinent and amusing.
I repeat myself only because in the same (current) edition of LRB, there is an extraordinarily interesting review of Richard Davenport Hines book, An English Affair, Sex,Class and Power in the Age of Profumo that I mis-attributed to the author himself instead of David Runciman The review contains material about Profumo that I'm mildly surprised hasn't drawn comment in the press ......or perhaps it is already widely-known.

[amateur51]

To me its a well written piece and I thought the comments about The Young Duchess pertinent and amusing.
I repeat myself only because in the same (current) edition of LRB, there is an extraordinarily interesting review of Richard Davenport Hines book, An English Affair, Sex,Class and Power in the Age of Profumo that I mis-attributed to the author himself instead of David Runciman The review contains material about Profumo that I'm mildly surprised hasn't drawn comment in the press ......or perhaps it is already widely-known.

Thanks for the alert gradus - the resonances with News International and The Leveson Inquiry are well made.

I was about 11 or 12 when all this was going on and I remember puzzling about what an osteopath was (something pretty bad, clearly). And if being an osteopath was a bad thing, what made a society osteopath even worse?

[ahinton]

Thanks for the alert gradus - the resonances with News International and The Leveson Inquiry are well made.

I was about 11 or 12 when all this was going on and I remember puzzling about what an osteopath was (something pretty bad, clearly). And if being an osteopath was a bad thing, what made a society osteopath even worse?

A "society osteopath"? Isn't that just a rather pedantically cumbersone way of saying "sociopath"?

Anyway, in the light of the all too widespread misreporting that has resulted in certain people relishing the prospect of pillorying Hilary over this Mantelpiece, the twice-gonged author (sorry, Mr GongGong!) seems unlikely to be able to turn her honours into a hat-trick (i.e. of three gongs), which seems a great pity given that the generally accepted rightful place for goings is, after all, on a mantelpiece...

I've run out of coats to get so must go to my nearest charity shop to get another one (or I would if the charity shops in Hereford weren't closing down like the other shops)...