By Sammie Jones-
Wolf Hall author, Hilary Mantel is hating on the princess Diana and the royal family in her spiteful writings. The author appears to be using her controversial take on Diana to attract more publicity on her writing career, but the 65 year old author leaves herself looking hateful and jealous of the late princess.
The twice prize winning author(Shiva Nairpaul memorial prize, 87, and Southern Arts Literature prize for Fludd, 1990) expresses utter cynicism and insensitivity in her harsh criticism of Diana and the Royal family in her writings in the week of the 20th anniversary of the Princess’ death. Her comments are in relation to Channel 4’s recent documentary, Diana In Her Own Words.
The Wolf Hall author said the documentary, shower her: “Squirming, twitching, avoiding the camera’s eye, she describes herself hopefully as ‘a rebel’, on the grounds that she liked to do the opposite of everyone else.
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“You want to veil the lens and explain: that is reaction, not rebellion. Throwing a tantrum when thwarted doesn’t make you a free spirit. Rolling your eyes and shrugging doesn’t prove you are brave, she said. In a harsh swipe at princess Diana, the author berates Diana’s intelligence and attempts to rubbish Diana’s handshake with an aids patient in 1987.
“Even in the unenlightened days of 1987, only the bigoted and ignorant thought casual contact would infect them,” she says.She added: “By her own account, Diana was not clever. Nor was she especially good, in the sense of having a dependable inclination to virtue; she was quixotically loving, not steadily charitable: mutable, not dependable: given to infatuation, prey to impulse.” She fails to elaborate on her reasons for each of these strong and demeaning adjectives, more reflective of her love for writing and expression of writing, than for concrete and insightful assessment.
PLASTIC
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Mantel is on record for once stating that Kate, Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge as a “plastic princess”, whose only purpose is to breed. Her comments are not only uncharitable, but they reveal a relatively hardened person whose emotional side fails to shine through her poisonous writing. The Devon writer now says the reason for Diana’s place in the public affection was because other leading women at the time appeared . Mantel’s views are damn right arrogant, offensive, and reveals a writer desperate for attention. The level and tone of her words suggest jealousy and lack of any sense of feeling.
Mantel wrote: “A soft-eyed, fertile blond, she represented conjugal and maternal love, and what other source did we have?
‘Until Tony Blair took office as a fresh-faced Prince Charming we had female leaders, but they were old and their cupboards were bare of food and love: a queen who, even at Diana’s death, was reluctant to descend from the cold north, and a prime minister formerly known as Maggie Thatcher, Milk Snatcher.”
Writing in The Guardian, Mantel, claimed Diana was different in death than in life, and had become a creation made and moulded by the public, and changed with. And she said the public fascination with her shows no sign of ending.
“Instead, we gossip about her as if she had just left the room. We still debate how in 1981 a sweet-faced, puppy-eyed 20-year-old came to marry into the royal house.
“Was it a setup from the start? Did she know her fiance loved another woman”? , she asks.Was she complicit, or was she an innocent, garlanded for the slab and the knife?” This question she asks hits the nerves, and forces every reader to entertain the inherent possibilities in her suggestions, but leaves no clear answers to her poignant insinuations. Her words point to a self inflicted turmoil caused by Princess Diana’s acceptance in marrying Prince Charles, leaving Diana ultimately presented as the metaphoric culprit of her own ill fate.
Princess Diana’s two sons recently gave a warm and moving account of their memories of their last days with their mother, Harry in particular painfully recalling how he hurried away from his last telephone conversation with his mother, without knowing it would be he last call. Authors like Mantel display a blissful ignorance about the effect her offensive comments based on highly debatable value judgements are.
Hilary is the president of the Budleigh Salterton Literary Festival , and has been a published writer for 32 years. Her first novel ‘Everyday is mother’s day, was published in 1985, whilst its sequel ‘vacant possession was published a year later in 1986, and was a film critic of the spectator in between 1987 and 1990. In September, 2014, she admitted in an article published by the Guardian, to fantasising about the murder of Margaret Thatcher. She fictionalized it in a short story called ”The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, 6th August 1983 ”. However, her literary accomplishments are no measure of the quality of her written assessment on princess Diana.
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