Hilary Mantel 1952-2022

Hilary Mantel died yesterday. As well as twelve novels, three story collections and a memoir, she wrote many pieces for the LRB, the first of them in 1987. She sent Karl Miller a note afterwards: ‘If you would like me to do another piece, I should be delighted to try ... I have no critical training whatsoever so I am forced to be more brisk and breezy than scholarly.’ More than fifty pieces followed, on French revolutionary figures from Robespierre to Théroigne de Méricourt; on Tudors from Jane Boleyn to Margaret Pole; on her own childhood and early adulthood. Her 2013 Winter Lecture on ‘Royal Bodies’ considered the public perception of royal women from Anne Boleyn to Kate Middleton. She wrote to Mary-Kay Wilmers in 2005:

I started writing The Complete Stranger, my novel set in Africa, and left it off because it was frightening me – I hope that means it will be good, ultimately – and decided to have a go at Wolf Hall, my novel about Thomas Cromwell. Oh, the joy of having a main character who’s not neurotic! I wish I’d thought of it before. The only trouble is I have to kill off Cardinal Wolsey soon, and I’m going to miss him so much. The outfits, my dear! I wonder why we bother wearing anything but scarlet.