Hilary Mantel is a British author and a prolific writer. Her first book, Every Day is Mother’s Day, was published in 1985, shortly before her return to England after years spent living with her husband in Botswana and Saudi Arabia. Subsequently, she became a film critic for The Spectator (1987-1991) and a reviewer for papers and magazines in the UK and United States. Her books have been received with critical acclaim, and she was awarded the Booker Prize in 2009 for her novel Wolf Hall and in 2012 for the novel Bring Up the Bodies, becoming the first woman to receive the prestigious award twice.
Hilary Mantel
Hilary Mantel
The Mirror & The Light
Watch
Hilary Mantel
On Crafting Suspense
Thomas Cromwell
Portrait by Hans Holbein
Hilary Mantel
On Writing The Mirror & The Light
Watch
Hilary Mantel
On Building Up a World Picture
Hilary Mantel
The Mirror & The Light
Watch
Hilary Mantel
On How the Past is Not About Us
Watch
Hilary Mantel
On the Fascination Behind Thomas Cromwell
Featured book by Hilary Mantel
The Mirror & The Light
This novel is the third and final instalment of the Thomas Cromwell trilogy, after Wolf Hall (2009) and Bring Up the Bodies (2012). The plot covers the last four years of Cromwell, minister at the court of Henry VIII, from the death of Anne Boleyn in 1536 to his public execution in 1540, detailing his fall from grace and inevitable demise with suspenseful pathos.
Read moreOther books by Hilary Mantel
Wolf Hall
By Hilary Mantel
Recommended by: Elizabeth Gilbert
Publish Date: 2009 Awards: 2009 Man Booker Prize
Hilary Mantel’s acclaimed masterpiece is the first instalment in the Wolf Hall trilogy, tracing the rise of Thomas Cromwell under the cruel and capricious Henry VIII. A shrewd and ambitious self-made man, Cromwell emerges as a powerful force within the…
Author recommends
Oh Happy Day
By Carmen Callil
Recommended by: Hilary Mantel
Publish Date: 2020
A compelling tale of ‘poverty, social injustice, Empire and migration’, the book tells the story of Carmen Callil’s family, tracing back their origins to the Midlands in the early 19th century. Uncovering the journey of Sary, her great-great-grandmother, a poor…
Island Dreams
By Gavin Francis
Recommended by: Hilary Mantel
Publish Date: 2020
Described as ‘a simple but sincere cartography of my own obsession with the twinned but opposing allures of island and city, of isolation and connection’, Island Dreams explores the appeal of islands in our consciousness by recounting some of the…
The Haunting Of Alma Fielding
By Kate Summerscale
Recommended by: Hilary Mantel
Publish Date: 2020
Alma Fielding is an ordinary housewife in 1938 London, who finds herself suddenly haunted. Nandor Fodor is a Jewish-Hungarian refugee and chief ghost hunter for the International Institute for Psychical Research, who, intrigued by the case, begins to investigate. What…