Hilary Mantel is one of Britain’s most accomplished, acclaimed and garlanded writers. Uniquely, her last two novels, Wolf Hall and its sequel Bring Up the Bodies, both won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction. She is the first British author to have won two Booker prizes, the only woman to have done so and the only writer to have won with two consecutive novels. Sir Peter Stothard, Chair of the judges for the Man Booker Prize 2012, hailed her as ‘the greatest modern English prose writer’. To date, Wolf Hall has sold over 200,000 copies in hardback, and 800,000 copies in paperback, in the UK alone.
She was born in northern Derbyshire in 1952. She was educated at a convent school in Cheshire and went on to the LSE and Sheffield University, where she studied law. After university she was briefly a social worker in a geriatric hospital, and much later used her experiences in her novels Every Day is Mother’s Day and Vacant Possession. In 1977 she went to live in Botswana with her husband, then a geologist. In 1982 they moved on to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, where she would set her third novel, Eight Months on Ghazzah Street.
Her first novel was published in 1985, and she returned to the UK the following year. In 1987 she was awarded the Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize for travel writing, and became the film critic of the Spectator. Her fourth novel, Fludd, was awarded the Cheltenham Festival Prize, the Southern Arts Literature Prize, and the Winifred Holtby Prize. Her fifth novel, A Place of Greater Safety, won the Sunday Express Book of the Year Award.
A Change of Climate, published in 1993, is the story of an East Anglian family, former missionaries, torn apart by conflicts generated in Southern Africa in the early years of Apartheid. An Experiment in Love, published in 1995, is a story about childhood and university life, set in London in 1970. It was awarded the Hawthornden Prize. Beyond Black, published in 2005, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize, while Wolf Hall won the 2009 Man Booker Prize, and Bring Up the Bodies, its sequel, won the 2012 Man Booker Prize. Hilary was also awarded a CBE in 2006. In 2014 she was made a Dame.
She reviews widely for a range of newspapers and magazines, and is currently working on the sequel to Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, to be called The Mirror and the Light.
Blog Posts
Books by Hilary Mantel
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Mantel Pieces: Royal Bodies and Other Writing from the London Review of Books
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Mantel Pieces: Royal Bodies and Other Writing from the London Review of Books
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Mantel Pieces: Royal Bodies and Other Writing from the London Review of Books
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Mantel Pieces: Royal Bodies and Other Writing from the London Review of Books
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The Mirror and the Light (The Wolf Hall Trilogy)
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The Mirror and the Light
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The Mirror and the Light (The Wolf Hall Trilogy, Book 3)
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The Mirror and the Light (The Wolf Hall Trilogy)
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The Mirror and the Light (The Wolf Hall Trilogy)
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The Mirror and the Light: An Adaptation in 30 Minute Episodes (The Wolf Hall Trilogy)
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The Mirror and the Light (The Wolf Hall Trilogy)
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The Mirror and the Light (The Wolf Hall Trilogy)
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Bring Up the Bodies (The Wolf Hall Trilogy)
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Wolf Hall (The Wolf Hall Trilogy)
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The Mirror and the Light (The Wolf Hall Trilogy)
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The Mirror and the Light (The Wolf Hall Trilogy)
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Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies (The Wolf Hall Trilogy)
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Bring Up the Bodies (The Wolf Hall Trilogy)
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Wolf Hall (The Wolf Hall Trilogy)
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A Place of Greater Safety (4th Estate Matchbook Classics)
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Matchbook Classics Box Set
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The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher
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The School of English
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Wolf Hall (The Wolf Hall Trilogy)
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Bring Up the Bodies (The Wolf Hall Trilogy)
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The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher
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The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher
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The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher
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The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher
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How Shall I Know You?
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Wolf Hall & Bring Up the Bodies: RSC Stage Adaptation – Revised Edition
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Wolf Hall & Bring Up the Bodies: RSC Stage Adaptation – Revised Edition
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Wolf Hall & Bring Up the Bodies: RSC Stage Adaptation
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Wolf Hall & Bring Up the Bodies: RSC Stage Adaptation
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Hilary Mantel Collection: Six of Her Best Novels
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Hilary Mantel Collection: Six of Her Best Novels
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Bring Up the Bodies (The Wolf Hall Trilogy)
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Three-Book Edition: A Place of Greater Safety; Beyond Black; The Giant O’Brien
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Bring up the Bodies (The Wolf Hall Trilogy)
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Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies
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Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies: Two-Book Edition
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Wolf Hall (The Wolf Hall Trilogy)
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Bring up the Bodies (The Wolf Hall Trilogy)
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Bring up the Bodies (The Wolf Hall Trilogy)
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Bring Up the Bodies (The Wolf Hall Trilogy)
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Bring Up the Bodies (The Wolf Hall Trilogy, Book 2)
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Bring up the Bodies
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The Giant, O’Brien
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King Billy is a Gentleman (Fast Fiction)
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Comma (Fast Fiction)
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Curved is the Line of Beauty (Fast Fiction)
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Learning to Talk (Fast Fiction)
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Third Floor Rising (Fast Fiction)
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Ink in the Blood: A Hospital Diary
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A Change of Climate
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The Giant, O’Brien
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Vacant Possession
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Eight Months on Ghazzah Street
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Fludd
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An Experiment in Love
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Learning to Talk: Short stories
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Every Day Is Mother’s Day
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Fludd
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An Experiment in Love
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A Change of Climate
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The Giant, O’Brien
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Giving up the Ghost: A memoir
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Beyond Black
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A Place of Greater Safety
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Wolf Hall: Winner of the Man Booker Prize (The Wolf Hall Trilogy)
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Wolf Hall (The Wolf Hall Trilogy)
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Giving up the Ghost
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Beyond Black
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Wolf Hall (The Wolf Hall Trilogy)
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A Place of Greater Safety
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Wolf Hall (The Wolf Hall Trilogy)
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Wolf Hall (The Wolf Hall Trilogy)
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Wolf Hall (The Wolf Hall Trilogy)
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Wolf Hall (The Wolf Hall Trilogy)
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Wolf Hall (The Wolf Hall Trilogy)
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Wolf Hall: Winner of the Man Booker Prize (The Wolf Hall Trilogy, Book 1)
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Wolf Hall (The Wolf Hall Trilogy)
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Beyond Black
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Vacant Possession
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Every Day Is Mother’s Day
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Beyond Black
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Eight Months on Ghazzah Street
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Learning to Talk: Short stories
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Giving up the Ghost: A memoir
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The Giant, O’Brien
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