Dame Hilary Mantel set to take another bite of royal family

Whichever royal is charged with the novelist's investiture can expect a very sharp assessment

The literary world rejoiced this week when Hilary Mantel was made a dame, not least because fiction writers still seem under-represented in the ranks of Dame Commanders of the British Empire (the double Booker prize winner will join AS Byatt, Margaret Drabble, Penelope Lively and Jacqueline Wilson, all bar Byatt added in recent years as if in sheepish awareness of the need to boost numbers).

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