Tabloid slams novelist Mantel over Kate comments

LONDON (AP) - A novelist, a duchess and a tabloid newspaper have ignited an explosive debate in Britain: Is it all right to criticise a pregnant Kate? The Daily Mail on Tuesday ran a front-page broadside against two-time Booker Prize-winning author Hilary Mantel for what it called her "venomous attack" on the former Kate Middleton, now the Duchess of Cambridge.

Within hours, the Internet was ablaze. Prime Minister David Cameron joined in the criticism of Mantel while others rushed to her defense.

In a speech earlier this month, the writer had characterised the 31-year-old wife of Prince William as "a jointed doll on which certain rags were hung... a shop-window mannequin, with no personality of her own."

Mantel said that Kate, as a royal consort, "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."