Hilary Mantel has been criticized by British government officials and well-wishers of Kate Middleton for calling the Duchess a "shop window mannequin" and a "machine made" doll.

British government officials and well-wishers of Kate Middleton weren't too happy when during a lecture, British author Hilary Mantel referred to Middleton as "plastic" and a "shop window mannequin." According to Mantel, the Duchess had no personality of her own and her only role in life was to produce an heir to the throne.

"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 view of the princess. "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."

Newspapers called the British author as "venomous", "cruel" and "staggeringly rude". Prime Minister David Cameron also seconded the newspaper opinions saying Mantel was "misguided" and that the Duchess was a great ambassador of Britain.

"She writes great books, but I think what she's said about Kate Middleton is completely misguided and completely wrong," Cameron told Sky News.

Well-wishers also said that Mantel's comments were uncalled for. "It's totally uncalled for," said Morag Hamilton, 36, from London. "It's a shame - that's what her life is going to become now."

Mantel is the first British to win the Man Booker prize for fiction twice.

"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 and a royal spokeswoman declined to comment.