Last summer at the festival in Hay-on-Wye, I was asked to name a famous
person and choose a book to give them. I hate the leaden repetitiveness
of these little quizzes: who would be the guests at your ideal dinner
party, what book has changed your life, which fictional character do you
most resemble? I had to come up with an answer, however, so I chose
Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, and I chose to give her a book published
in 2006, by the cultural historian Caroline Weber; it’s called Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution.
It’s not that I think we’re heading for a revolution. It’s rather that 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, entirely defined by what she wore. These days she is a
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 that this young woman’s life until now was nothing, her only
point and purpose being to give birth.
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