Hilary Mantel (1952–2022) was a British novelist, short-story writer, memoirist and critic. Raised in Derbyshire, she studied law at the London School of Economics and the University of Sheffield, then worked as a teacher and social worker. Experiences in Africa and the Middle East informed parts of her early fiction.
Her work ranges widely. A Place of Greater Safety follows Danton, Robespierre and Desmoulins through the French Revolution; Beyond Black pairs a professional medium with the malign spirits surrounding her; Giving Up the Ghost is a memoir. Across historical and contemporary settings, Mantel wrote about memory, the body, belief and the workings of power. Her prose often combines close psychological perspective with mordant humor.
Wolf Hall, published in 2009, begins her trilogy about Thomas Cromwell’s rise at Henry VIII’s court. Bring Up the Bodies followed in 2012, and The Mirror & the Light completed the sequence in 2020. Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies each won the Booker Prize, making Mantel the first woman and first British writer to win it twice. The first two novels were also adapted for the stage by the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Start with Wolf Hall. It introduces Mantel’s Cromwell as a lawyer, strategist, family man and watchful outsider, while turning Henry’s pursuit of an annulment into immediate political drama. It is the natural doorway to her defining work.
