Mantel died “suddenly but peacefully” surrounded by close family and friends, publisher HarperCollins said Friday. Mantel is credited with reviving historical fiction with Wolf Hall and two sequels about the 16th-century English power broker Thomas Cromwell, right-hand man to King Henry VIII. The publisher said Mantel was “one of the greatest English novelists of this century”. “Her beloved works are considered modern classics. She will be greatly missed,” she said in a statement. LISTEN to Hilary Mantel in conversation with CBC’s Writers & Company: Writers and Company58:47 Hilary Mantel completes blockbuster Tudor trilogy with The Mirror & the Light The two-time Booker Prize winner talks to Eleanor Wachtel about completing her chronicle of Thomas Cromwell in the court of King Henry VIII. Mantel won the Booker Prize twice, for Wolf Hall in 2009 and its sequel Bring Up the Bodies in 2012. The latest installment, The Mirror and the Light, was published in 2020. The success of Wolf Hall propelled Mantel from a critically acclaimed but modestly selling novelist to a literary superstar. Before that, he had written works including A Place of Greater Safety, set during the French Revolution, and Beyond Black, about the life of a psychic medium. “I’m always conscious of untold stories,” he told CBC’s Writers & Company in 2012. “Historical fiction is in many ways a work of recovery, rediscovery, restoration sometimes.” All of us at the Booker Prizes are deeply saddened to hear of the death of Hilary Mantel, four-time nominee and winner of the Booker Prize in 2009 and 2012. We send our sincere condolences to her family, friends and colleagues. —@TheBookerPrizes Mandel turned Cromwell, a shadowy political fixer, into a fascinating, complex literary hero. Cromwell was an architect of the Reformation who helped the king realize his desire to divorce Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn. The Vatican’s refusal to annul Henry’s first marriage led the monarch to reject the authority of the Pope and place himself as head of the Church of England.

“wiping the slate clean”

It’s a period in history that has inspired many books, films and TV series, from A Man for All Seasons to The Tudors. But Mantel managed to make the familiar story new and exciting. “The first thing I did then was go back into the historical record — try to forget what I was reading in my biographies — and I started accessing a very different story,” he told CBC Radio in 2020. “I saw how historians don’t they have only prejudices but also mistakes, from one generation to another. “So I felt like I was wiping the slate clean and trying to see Cromwell as if for the first time.” We are devastated at the death of our beloved author, Dame Hilary Mantel, and our thoughts are with her friends and family, especially her husband, Gerald. This is a devastating loss and we can only be grateful that he left us with such a wonderful work. pic.twitter.com/d8bzkBBXuH —@4thEstateBooks The first two novels in the trilogy were adapted into a 2015 BBC series starring Mark Rylance as Cromwell, Damian Lewis as Henry VIII and Claire Foy as the king’s second wife, Anne Boleyn.

The disease affected the marriage, the professional course

Nicholas Pearson, Mantel’s long-time editor, said her death was “devastating”. “Just last month I sat with her on a sunny afternoon in Devon as she talked excitedly about the new novel she had started,” he said. “That we will no longer have the pleasure of her words is unbearable. What we have is a body of work that will be read for generations.” Mantel studied Law at the London School of Economics and the University of Sheffield and initially worked as a social worker. She turned to writing fiction while living in Botswana for five years with her geologist husband Gerald McEwen. The couple divorced, a rift Mantel attributed to her illness and infertility caused by the treatment she received for it, but later remarried. She would later write the memoir Giving Up the Ghost (2003), which chronicled years of ill health, including undiagnosed endometriosis. She once said that years of illness destroyed her dream of becoming a lawyer, but made her a writer. Her first novel, Every Day is Mother’s Day, was published in 1985. In total she wrote 17 books, including non-fiction works.

Politically honest

Mantel could be politically honest. A 2013 lecture in which he described the former Kate Middleton, wife of Prince William, as a “display mannequin with no personality of her own” drew the ire of the British tabloid press. Mantel said she was not talking about the Duchess herself, but was describing a view of Kate constructed by the press and public opinion. The author was however criticized by then Prime Minister David Cameron, among others. Right-wing commentators also took issue with a short story entitled The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, which imagined an attack on the Conservative leader. It was published in 2014, the same year Queen Elizabeth II made Mandel a dame, the female equivalent of a knighthood. An opponent of Brexit, she said in 2021 that she hoped to acquire Irish citizenship and become “European again”. Mantel is survived by her husband;