Hilary Mantel

Hilary Mantel was one of the most acclaimed and important British novelists of the twenty-first century, best known for the Wolf Hall trilogy — a monumental reimagining of the life of Thomas Cromwell that won the Booker Prize twice and cemented her reputation as one of the greatest historical novelists in the English language. Born Hilary Mary Thompson in Glossop, Derbyshire in 1952, Mantel grew up in a working-class Catholic family. She studied Law at the London School of Economics and the University of Sheffield before turning to writing. Her early life was marked by chronic illness — she suffered from endometriosis that went undiagnosed for years and later underwent surgery that left her unable to have children. These experiences of pain, medical neglect, and the body's betrayals informed her fiction throughout her career. Her first novel, Every Day Is Mother's Day, was published in 1985, and over the following decades she produced a body of work that ranged across historical fiction, contemporary satire, and memoir. A Place of Greater Safety (1992), set during the French Revolution, and Beyond Black (2005), about a medium on the Home Counties circuit, demonstrated her extraordinary range. But it was Wolf Hall, published in 2009, that transformed her career. The novel follows Thomas Cromwell — blacksmith's son, lawyer, and fixer — as he rises to become one of the most powerful men in the court of Henry VIII. Told in Mantel's distinctive, immersive present tense and close third person, the novel reimagined Cromwell as a complex, sympathetic figure, challenging centuries of historical caricature. It won the Booker Prize and was followed by Bring Up the Bodies (2012), which also won the Booker — making Mantel the first woman and the first British author to win the prize twice. The Mirror & the Light (2020) completed the trilogy. The BBC adaptation of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, starring Mark Rylance as Cromwell, was a critical triumph. The audiobook editions of the Wolf Hall trilogy are magnificent, with narrators delivering performances that capture the density, beauty, and political tension of Mantel's prose. Hilary Mantel was made a Dame in 2014 for services to literature. She died in September 2022 at the age of seventy. Her books and audiobooks endure as some of the finest literature produced in any era — ambitious, humane, and unforgettable.