Kate shows off royal 'baby bump'

The Duchess of Cambridge has attended one of her first official public engagements since it was revealed in December that she is expecting her first child with William, the Duke of Cambridge, this summer.

The former Kate Middleton appeared Tuesday atHope House, aLondon treatment centre for womenrecovering from addiction.

The royal couple's first child is due in July.

Photos of a pregnant, bikini-clad Kate werepublished last weekby an Italian gossip magazine. They were taken whilethe couple was vacationing on the Caribbean island of Mustique.

Kate's visit to the treatment centre came amida flurry of comments and criticism over a speech byHilary Mantel,a Booker Prize-winning novelist.

InaLondon Review of Books lecture earlier this monthabout royal women and their relationships with the public and the press,Mantel said Kate "appeared to have been designed by committee and built by craftsmen, with a perfect plastic smile and the spindles of her limbs hand-turned and gloss-varnished."

"Kate seems to have been selected for her role of princess because she was irreproachable: as painfully thin as anyone could wish, without quirks, without oddities, without the risk of the emergence of character," Mantel added.

She later said: "We are happy to allow monarchy to be an entertainment, in the same way that we license strip joints and lap-dancing clubs. Adulation can swing to persecution, within hours..."

[IMAGEGALLERY galleryid=156 size=small]

Some of the British press assumed Mantel was directly attacking Kate. The Daily Mail accused Mantel of launching "an astonishing and venomous attack" onher, while the Sun called it a "bizarre rant."

On a trip to India, British Prime Minister David Camerontold the BBC, "Ithink[Mantel] writes great books, but I think what she's said about Kate Middleton is completely misguided and completely wrong."