In her lecture, Mantel described how Catherine's public image was first defined by her clothes, and then her pregnancy.

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Tut-tutting, my dream-self collects the discarded jewels and then walks around aimlessly looking for Mom so I can both read her a stern lecture and return them to her.

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Mantel's literary agent, Bill Hamilton, said Tuesday the author had no comment on the controversy over her lecture.

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Mantel's literary agent, Bill Hamilton, said Tuesday that she had no comment on the controversy over her lecture.

CNN: STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Other women stopped her in public to lecture about the virtues of breast milk.

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Her hours-long lecture is a mesmerizing romp of set pieces and extemporaneous patter, jumping from Christopher Columbus, to Egyptian pyramids, to the Great Wall, to Bill Gates.

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Another nonmusical highlight of the trip: a witty, revelatory lecture on the writer Flannery O'Connor, presented at her birthplace by Christopher Hope, the distinguished novelist and poet, who is also Daniel Hope's father.

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Her novels focus on the Tudors -- and in the lecture, she draws a parallel between the current fascination with Catherine's body and the public scrutiny under which the wives of Henry VIII sought to produce a male heir.

CNN: STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Her novels focus on the Tudors -- and in the lecture, she draws a parallel between the current fascination with Catherine's body and the public gaze under which the wives of Henry VIII sought to produce a male heir.

CNN: STORY HIGHLIGHTS

This was a lecture which provided a real insight into the life of one of the 20th Centuries great poets, who among her many accolades was asked to perform at the 1993 inauguration of President Bill Clinton.

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