(Photo: REUTERS/Kirsty Wigglesworth/Pool)Britain's Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge listens to her husband Prince William deliver a speech during a visit to Cambridge University in Cambridge, central England November 28, 2012.Kate Middleton has been attacked by two-time Booker Prize-winner Hilary Mantel in a verbal assault in which the Duchess was described as "a jointed doll on which certain rags were hung ... a shop-window mannequin."
The verbal assault came earlier this month, when Mantel claimed Prince William's wife "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."
The controversial speech was reprinted this week in the London Review of Books, which has garnered strong backlash from fans of the British Royal Family.
The UK's Daily Mail publication has described the speech as "an astonishing and venomous attack on the Duchess of Cambridge."
However, others have claimed that the speech was simply addressing the fickle way in which the press praises the Royal Family, casting them as roll models, but that the "adulation can swing to persecution, within hours."
In Mantel's speech she admits that she was describing a view of Middleton formed from the press and public opinion, and that it was not a personal attack per se.
However, the debate about her words has been heated with many unhappy, calling her disrespectful and rude.
Even the British Prime Minister has weighed in on the topic, and said that Mantel's controversial words were "completely misguided and completely wrong," according to The Press Association.
Sixty year old Mantel won the Booker Prize in 2009 and again in 2012 for "Wolf Hall" and "Bring Up the Bodies" respectively. The novels are centered around the court of King Henry VIII and follows the king's search for a queen so that he could be given a male heir to the royal throne.
Here is a recent video released this week showing Kate Middleton going about a public royal visit. Her baby bump can be clearly seen through her dress:
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