Every Day Is Mother's Day (1985)
Debut novel: black comedy about a reclusive mother and her disturbed daughter
Literature · Novelists
Hilary Mantel
1952–2022 · English
Historical fiction
Dame Hilary Mantel transformed the historical novel with her Wolf Hall trilogy, a present-tense, close-up retelling of the rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell at the court of Henry VIII. Wolf Hall (2009) and Bring Up the Bodies (2012) both won the Booker Prize, making her the first woman to win it twice. She also wrote a novel of the French Revolution, dark contemporary comedies and a memoir.
How to spot them
- ▸Thomas Cromwell, son of a Putney blacksmith, referred to throughout as 'he'
- ▸First woman to win the Booker Prize twice (2009 and 2012)
- ▸Wolf Hall, the Seymour family seat in Wiltshire
- ▸Born in Glossop, Derbyshire; memoir Giving Up the Ghost
Key works
A Place of Greater Safety (1992)
The French Revolution seen through Danton, Robespierre and Camille Desmoulins
Giving Up the Ghost (2003)
Memoir of her childhood and years of undiagnosed illness
Beyond Black (2005)
Darkly comic novel about Alison, a medium haunted by spirits in the commuter belt around the M25
Wolf Hall (2009)
Booker winner: Thomas Cromwell rises to serve Henry VIII during the fall of Cardinal Wolsey
Bring Up the Bodies (2012)
Booker and Costa Book of the Year winner: Cromwell engineers the downfall of Anne Boleyn
The Mirror and the Light (2020)
Final part of the trilogy, ending with Cromwell's execution in 1540
The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher (2014)
Short stories; the title story imagines a sniper targeting Thatcher in Windsor in 1983
Key ideas
- Rehabilitated Thomas Cromwell from villain to complex, pragmatic hero
- Close third-person present tense that places the reader inside Cromwell's mind
- Research-based fiction that aimed never to contradict the historical record
Quick-fire facts
- •Born Hilary Mary Thompson in Glossop, Derbyshire, in 1952; studied law at the LSE and the University of Sheffield
- •Lived in Botswana and Saudi Arabia, the setting of Eight Months on Ghazzah Street (1988)
- •Suffered for years from endometriosis, which was long misdiagnosed
- •Bring Up the Bodies was the first sequel to win the Booker Prize
- •Appointed Dame (DBE) in 2014
- •The BBC's Wolf Hall (2015) starred Mark Rylance as Cromwell; the RSC staged the first two books
- •Died on 22 September 2022, aged 70
Drill it — 8 cards
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Sources
- NPR — Remembering Hilary Mantel, Booker Prize-winning author of the 'Wolf Hall' saga
- Hilary Mantel — Giving Up the Ghost