Hilary Mantel, critically acclaimed writer and author of the Wolf Hall trilogy, has died aged 70.
The British author’s death was announced on Twitter by her publisher: “We are heartbroken at the death of our beloved author, Dame Hilary Mantel, and our thoughts are with her friends and family, especially her husband, Gerald.”
Mantel was born in Glossop, Derbyshire and studied Law at the London School of Economics and Sheffield University.
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Before writing, she had previously worked as a social worker and lived in Botswana for five years.
She then moved to Saudi Arabia for four years and later returned to England in the 1980s.
In 2006, Mantel was awarded a CBE and in 2014 she received a DBE.
Hilary was a patron of theatrical mentoring project Scene and Heard, a governor of RSC and president of the Budleigh Festival.
Her popular Wolf Hall trilogy received praise from many famous faces and Oxford theology professor Thomas Cromwell was amongst them.
He said: “Hilary has reset the historical patterns through the way in which she’s reimagined the man.”
Hilary won the esteemed Man Booker Price twice – once for Wolf Hall and another for the book’s sequel Bring Up The Bodies, which was also awarded the Costa Book Of The Year in 2012.
The final book in the trilogy, The Mirror and the Light, was released in 2020 and was an instant hit.
It became a number one fiction best seller and was long listed for The Booker Prize in 2020.
It also won the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, which she also won for the trilogy’s first book Wolf Hall.
Among some of her other best selling books are Every Day is Mother’s Day, Vacant Possession, Eight Months on Ghazzah Street, Fludd, A Change of Climate, Learning to Talk and The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher.
The writer has also written non-fiction pieces including Giving Up The Ghost, which is a collection of writings from the London Review Of Books.
Her other non-fiction publications include Mantel Pieces and The Wolf Hall Picture Book.
Tributes for the author have been pouring in since the announcement of her death and CEO of HarperCollins Charlie Redmayne said that the news was “terrible” and “tragic”.
He continued: “We are so proud that 4th Estate and HarperCollins were Hilary’s publisher, and for such a peerless body of work. A writer to the core, Hilary was one of the greatest of her generation – a serious, fearless novelist with huge empathy for her subjects.”
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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
