Dame Hilary Mantel, author of the best-selling Wolf Hall trilogy, has died aged 70, her publisher says.
Dame Hilary Mantel, author of the best-selling Wolf Hall trilogy, has died aged 70, her publisher has confirmed.
She won the Booker Prize twice, for 2009’s Wolf Hall, the first in the Thomas Cromwell series, and the 2012 follow-up Bring Up the Bodies.
In a statement, her publisher said: “We are heartbroken at the death of our beloved author, Dame Hilary Mantel.
“Our thoughts are with her friends and family, especially her husband, Gerald.
“This is a devastating loss and we can only be grateful she left us with such a magnificent body of work.”
The conclusion to her trilogy, The Mirror and the Light, was published in 2020 to much critical acclaim, became a fiction best-seller and was longlisted for The Booker Prize 2020.
Wolf Hall was a fictional account of Thomas Cromwell’s rise to power in the court of Henry VIII.
In an interview with The Guardian, Dame Hilary said it took years to research the books to ensure they were historically accurate portrayals.
She said it was her aim to put the reader in “that time and that place, putting you into Henry’s entourage”.
“The essence of the thing is not to judge with hindsight, not to pass judgement from the lofty perch of the 21st Century when we know what happened,” she said.
“It’s to be there with them in that hunting party at Wolf Hall, moving forward with imperfect information and perhaps wrong expectations, but in any case moving forward into a future that is not pre-determined, but where chance and hazard will play a terrific role.”
Dame Hilary was the first woman to receive the Booker Prize twice.