Mary Beard

Hilary Mantel has seen sales of her award-winning novels soar after making headlines worldwide by describing the Duchess of Cambridge as “painfully thin, shop window mannequin”.

Mantel, who has won the Man Booker Prize twice, said the Duchess had a "perfect plastic smile", being viewed as having “no personality of her own, entirely defined by what she wore”.

While she has not yet commented on the furore, Mantel will no doubt be pleased to hear of one positive side-effect, as sales of her book have rocketed.

The New York Review of Books announces plans for its 50th Anniversary with a year marked by special events, launching with a large public event at Town Hall on Tuesday, February 5, 2013 that will include contributors Michael Chabon, Joan Didion, John Banville, Mary Beard, Daniel Mendelsohn, Darryl Pinckney, and Mark Danner. In February of 1963, the Review published its first lone issue amid one of the most vexing strikes in American history, a printer’s strike that shut down seven New York City newspapers.