If you didn't know who Hilary Mantel was before now, all you need to know is that she's a big, fat, barren, feminist turncoat.

That is, if you believe what you read in the tabloids.

''Beauty and the barren'' … Hilary Mantel, left, and the Duchess of Cambridge.

Mantel's sin was to give a speech about the British monarchy at the British Museum in which she made mention of Our Kate - or is it Their Catherine - Middleton.

''Aren't they nice to look at?'' Mantel said about the monarchy. ''Some people find them endearing; some pity them for their precarious situation; everybody stares at them, and however airy the enclosure they inhabit, it's still a cage . . . I'm asking us to back off and not be brutes.''