Hilary Mantel

Hilary Mantel (born July 6, 1952, Hadfield, Derbyshire, England—died September 22, 2022, Exeter, Devon) was an English writer known for her bleakly comic, socially probing novels set in a wide range of contemporary and historical milieus. Her most notable work was a trilogy based on the life of Thomas Cromwell: Wolf Hall (2009), Bring Up the Bodies (2012), and The Mirror & the Light (2020).

Born into a working-class Roman Catholic family, Mantel attended convent school before embarking on a law degree at the London School of Economics. She finished her studies at the University of Sheffield in 1973 and found work first as a social worker and then as a store assistant. After moving to Botswana with her husband, a geologist, Mantel turned her attention to creating fiction, driven to write by the cultural isolation she experienced in Africa as well as by the inactivity imposed on her by a chronic medical condition, later diagnosed as endometriosis. In 1983 she and her husband relocated to Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, where she completed her first novel, Every Day Is Mother’s Day (1985), before eventually moving back to England.

The book, a dark comedy about a social worker’s involvement with an emotionally unbalanced woman and her autistic daughter, established Mantel’s talent for vivid characterization and sharp social criticism, and she capitalized on its success a year later with a sequel, Vacant Possession. In 1987 Mantel wrote an essay for the British magazine The Spectator about her experiences in Jiddah, and she subsequently served (1987–91) as a film and book reviewer for the publication. Jiddah also provided the backdrop for her next novel, Eight Months on Ghazzah Street (1988), a political thriller charged with a sense of profound cultural conflict. Demonstrating her versatility, Mantel followed that book with a fanciful religious mystery set in 1950s England, Fludd (1989).

Mantel’s reputation was further enhanced with the publication of the novel A Place of Greater Safety (1992), a richly detailed chronicle of the French Revolution as seen through the eyes of three of its central participants. She drew on her years in Botswana to write the novel A Change of Climate (1994), about British missionaries in South Africa, and on her own straitened adolescence for the clear-eyed coming-of-age novel An Experiment in Love (1995). Three years later she returned to historical fiction with The Giant, O’Brien, which imaginatively explores and contrasts the lives of two real 18th-century figures—a freakishly tall sideshow performer steeped in the Irish oral tradition and a Scottish surgeon in thrall to modern science.

Mantel took a break from novels to write Giving Up the Ghost (2003), a memoir that depicts her anxiety-ridden childhood and her later struggle with illness. That same year she produced a collection of loosely autobiographical short stories, Learning to Talk. Additional recognition came for Beyond Black (2005), a wryly humorous novel about a psychic, which was short-listed for the Orange Prize for Fiction (later the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction), but it was her next book that set the literary world abuzz.

A voluminous fictional narrative depicting the rise of Thomas Cromwell to become the principal adviser to King Henry VIII of England, Wolf Hall (2009) was lauded for its impressive scope and complex portrayal of its subject. It was honoured with the Booker Prize, and it became an international best seller. A sequel, Bring Up the Bodies (2012), which focuses more narrowly on Cromwell’s role in the downfall of Anne Boleyn, won the Booker Prize as well as the top honour (book of the year) of the Costa Book Awards. The two novels were adapted as a pair of stage plays that debuted at the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2013, and they were also developed as a 2015 television miniseries. In 2020 Mantel published the final installment in the trilogy, The Mirror & the Light, which chronicles Cromwell’s fall from power and his execution. The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher (2014) is a collection of darkly amusing short stories. She also released a volume of essays, Mantel Pieces: Royal Bodies and Other Writing from the London Review of Books (2020).

Mantel was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2006 and a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 2014.

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