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Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, arrives at Hope House Tuesday.
Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, debuted her baby bump today for the first time since being hospitalized for severe morning sickness in December.
The Duchess, wearing a grey print wrap dress that demurely revealed the future king or queen and black heels, visited Hope House in London today.
Meanwhile, an Italian magazine that published topless photos of Prince William's wife last year is reportedly printing new pictures of the pregnant duchess on a beach holiday in the Caribbean, provoking condemnation from royal officials.
St. James's Palace expressed disappointment Tuesday that the pictures may be published, saying it would amount to a "clear breach of the couple's right to privacy." It did not say whether officials would be prepared to take legal action against the gossip magazine.
The magazine, Chi, is said to be planning to publish the pictures Wednesday. The photos reportedly show Prince William's wife wearing a bikini and strolling on a beach with William on the island of Mustique.
Last September, the magazine — owned by former Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi — published a 26-page special featuring topless photos of the duchess while she and William vacationed in the south of France.
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The royal couple took legal action to halt the use of those intimate photos, but had only limited success. Although a French court ordered gossip magazine Closer to stop further publication of the pictures, they went on to be published in Chi, other publications across Europe, and on the Internet.
The royal couple was also in the news Tuesday after one of Britain's most celebrated authors launched a withering attack on the duchess, branding her a "shop-window mannequin" with a plastic smile whose only role in life is to breed.
In an unusually scathing public attack on a British royal, Hilary Mantel said the princess had no personality, a "perfect plastic smile" and appears to have been designed by a committee.
The writer's comments about the pregnant 31-year-old wife of second-in-line to the British throne Prince William sharply divided public opinion. Newspapers condemned Mantel's words as "venomous", "cruel" and "staggeringly rude", while supporters said it was a thoughtful analysis of the role of royal women over the centuries.
"I saw Kate becoming a jointed doll on which certain rags are hung," Mantel said in a lecture at the British Museum in London earlier this month in which she spoke about her changing views about the princess.
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The crowd wait to see the princess as she visits the Hope House, an Action on Addiction women's treatment center in London.
"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."
Mantel, who last year became the first Briton to twice win the coveted Man Booker prize for fiction, referred to the princess's severe morning sickness during the early stage of her pregnancy and said her role was to provide an heir.
"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," Mantel said in the lecture organized by the London Review of Books on Feb. 4. The literary magazine reprinted the lecture on its Web site this week.
Mantel, 60, is best known for her historical novel "Wolf Hall", about the rise of blacksmith's son Thomas Cromwell to the pinnacle of power in King Henry VIII's court. Her follow-up "Bring Up the Bodies" recounted Anne Boleyn's fall from grace.
In her lecture, Mantel said the Duchess of Cambridge was "selected for her role ... because she was irreproachable", contrasting her with the "emotional incontinence" of William's late mother, Princess Diana.
"As painfully thin as anyone could wish, without quirks, without oddities, without the risk of the emergence of character. She appears precision-made, machine-made, so different from Diana," Mantel said.
The author's agent was not immediately available for comment. A St James's Palace spokeswoman had no comment.
Reaction on Twitter suggested Mantel had split public opinion. Royal commentator Robert Jobson said the "venomous attack" was "unfair and publicity-seeking". Others agreed with Mantel, saying she had elegantly articulated what many people had long thought about the royals.
The lecture looked at the "fascination with royalty" and the "regal body", examining the lives of royal women and the importance of providing an heir. Mantel compared that to the fuss made about pandas mating in captivity.
"Our current royal family doesn't have the difficulties in breeding that pandas do, but pandas and royal persons alike are expensive to conserve and ill-adapted to any modern environment," Mantel said. "But aren't they interesting? Aren't they nice to look at?
With AP and Reuters
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