Thanks for the link, Sharon. No doubt, if they are shown in Canada, I will watch them. I’m a sucker for all that “historical’ stuff. Please don’t judge me!

Sharon I always pay attention to you. Although too be fair you can really go off a person.
One thing this does prove is that a biography of GB is desperately needed, now more than ever, to counteract the poison. I wonder if he’ll cry at his trial and nearly faint, Or maybe he’ll be too busy smirking and sneering. Who knows? I haven’t been this excited since my kettle broke.

This certainly looks interesting! I must admit although i HATE the way Anne was portrayed in the book (especially her downfall) but i did warm to Mantel very much after attending one of her talks! Who knows this could spark an interest for publishers in a George Boleyn biography- so Louise maybe get ready for that

That’s a great idea Bill hopefully the portrayal’s of Anne and George will be a bit more ‘fleshed out’ in this adaption

Obviously the success of her highly inaccurate books has gone to Mantel’s head. She recently gave a lecture entitled ‘Undressing Anne Boleyn’, although how this woman has the audacity to hold herself out as some sort of expert is beyond me. She writes fiction for God’s sake. By attending lectures she’s holding herself out as an historian, and thereby giving the impression her books are well researched and accurate.
At the lecture Mantel said of the Duchess of Cambridge, ‘These days she is a mother-to-be, and draped in another set of threadbare attributions. Her only point of purpose being to give birth.’ She went on to say that that Kate has, ‘a perfect plastic smile’. What the hell gives her the right to use her dubious celebrity that way?
What a lovely lady Mantel is, although she may be well advised to crawl out of her own backside. I didn’t think my contempt for her could reach a lower ebb, but she managed it.

I have read the Mantel diatribe in it’s entirety and I can’t see how she has been quoted out of context. She made those comments, which were nasty and uncalled for. Once again, however, she gives her opinions just as she does in her books, and then hides behind the suggestion that she is referring to media exploitation. It’s an excuse.
She gives her opinion of the Boleyns and hides behind her fictional Cromwell in order to give voice those opinions. She gives her opinion of the Duchess of Cambridge and hides behind how she says the press view Kate in order to voice her opinions. She doesn’t even have the integrity to be honest about it.

I don’t agree that Mantel’s obesity or appearance should be referred to when considering her comments regarding the Duchess of Cambridge. That’s despite her own personal comments on Kate, her thinness and her plastic face. I think her comments should not have been given airspace or credence in the first place.
All those who defend Mantel point out the ‘fact’ that her attack on Kate was actually merely an indictment of the nasty press. I agree she has a valid point when it comes to our obsession with looks, and the press’s attitude to Kate, as with Diana before her.
I’m no fan of Gregory or Weir, but through gritted teeth I have to say that I agree with their take on this, just as I agree with Olga’s. Bearing in mind the portrayal of Anne Boleyn by both Weir and Gregory I find their comments hypocritical to say the least. It really is the pot calling the kettle black, but in this instance they both have a point where Mantel’s concerned.
Those who defend Mantel say she was supporting Kate and that she was merely projecting the press’s view of Kate, not her own. I suppose that’s similar to the adverse depiction of the Boleyns in BUTB. Of course she wasn’t giving her own views, merely Cromwell’s.
But despite what will no doubt be her protestations of innocence, look at what she actually says,
‘I saw Kate becoming a jointed doll on which certain rags are hung. In those days she was a shop window mannequin, with no personality of her own, and entirely defined by what she wore.’
OK the press may have seen her as a shop window mannequin defined by what she wore, but Mantel goes further then merely projecting her opinions of the press with the, ‘no personality of her own’. She goes on to say in the same paragraph,
‘These days she is 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 this young woman’s life until now was nothing, her only point of purpose being to give birth.’
Threadbare attributions? Is that not nasty? Once she’s got over being sick? Even worse. Is she merely saying that the press view Kate as a breeding machine, or has she hidden her own opinions behind the press, just as she hides her own opinions behind Cromwell in her books?
That comment is personal, and I believe that’s Mantel’s opinion. The reason I say that is because of what follows.
‘Kate Middleton, as she was, appeared to have been designed by committee and built by craftsmen, with a perfect plastic smile and the spindles of her limbs hand-turned and gloss-varnished.’ This sentence is typical of Mantel’s exquisite pretentiousness, but is it the press’s view of the single Kate? It’s Mantel’s comment; no one else’s.
‘Presumably Kate was designed to breed in some manners. She looks like a nicely brought up young lady, with ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ as part of her vocabulary.’
‘What does Kate read? It’s a question’.
‘Kate seems to have been selected for the 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.’
All of these comments are mind-numbingly patronising, and the last untrue. William selected Kate because he loved her. The royal family didn’t select her for him. Painfully thin? That’s Mantel’s opinion of her. If not then why not simply say ‘suitably slim’. This is an insult which gets at Kate, not the press. So how can Mantel argue she’s doing Kate a favour, particularly taking into account the last barb, ‘without the risk of the emergence of a personality’?
I agree that our interest in royalty is largely shallow. If Mantel limited her comments to the shallowness of our own and the press’s view of royalty, particularly female royalty, then I would have sympathy with her views. But she goes far further than that. If her intentions were, as those who defend her comments suggest, then she failed miserably. I find it difficult to believe that a woman who is allegedly such a wonderful writer could get it so wrong. There are too many sly little digs at a variety of different people hidden amongst her carefully crafted prose for it to be unintended.

Here is one link I found interesting:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new…..nsort.html

Alison Weir wrote this in defense of Kate Middleton. I’m sorry, but Mantel had no right to say the things she did, and I agree with Weir on this one.

The thing that I found a bit strange was that even if she was, as she claims, talking from the press’s point of view. I don’t think the press has ever expressed the opinion of Kate not having a personality, they are always pointing out how at ease she seems with the people she visits on her visits etc. They also praise her for her smiles and warm nature, not plastic at all. These are her opinions and hers alone

She is more than entitled to voice her opinion although I still don’t think there is any need to be rude about a person that hasn’t done any harm to anybody. However it’s ridiculous for her to hide behind the idea of the press’s opinions because half of what she said has never been the view of the press other than their obsession with her clothing.

She made out as if Kate had been raised and groomed to be Quee and personally chosen by the royal family. How can that be possible? She wasn’t even known to the royals untill William started dating her because he liked her for who she was. It wasn’t an arranged marriage from childhood, it was a marriage between two people that fell in love