Hilary Mantel authored 17 books. But it was her trilogy of historical
fiction based on the life of England's Thomas Cromwell and King Henry,
the eighth that brought her worldwide fame and acclaim. Mantle died
yesterday at age 70 of a stroke at a hospital near her home in Exeter,
England. The news hours Jeffrey Brown sat down with Mantle in 2015.
At the time, she had published the first two novels of the trilogy
Wolf Hall and bring up the body.
Eddie's
Former was being adapted for both the PBS television series and for
the Broadway stage. Here's an excerpt of their conversation. It's
part of our arts and Culture series canvas.
Hilary Mantel, and her historic characters are seemingly everywhere.
Expanding Henry
with his sixth wife. No one else has a ruler with six wives who cuts
the heads of two of them. So you're off to flying start their
novels, Wolf Hall and its sequel Bring Up The Bodies have been an
international sensation, with more than four million books sold in
37 languages.
She won the prestigious man Booker Prize, twice a first for a woman.
Meet up with our fellow Guild Zeman. It's a familiar story. In many
ways, the momentous rain in the 15 hundreds of the Tudor King Henry
played on television by Damian Lewis King should show himself sometimes
Don't you think basking in power but needing a male heir?
Cutting loose one wife in favor of the young and Bolin only to cut
her head off when no son is produced, But Hilary Mantel has told
the story in a new way, giving the lead role to Thomas Cromwell played
by Mark Rylance. What did you just do? Hit Mark Smeaton only with
one finger.
Cromwell has long been cast as the heavy, shadowy, cruel schemer,
especially as compared to his great rival, Thomas More
Man tells Cromwell is certainly clever and scheming, but he's also
charming in her bein Thomas Cromwell, son of a blacksmith.
Who rose to be the King's right hand man and eventually early of
ethics.
My question is simple. How do you do that?
What kind of a man in that hierarchical, structured society.
Can break through all the social layers all the factors stacked against
him and climb so high
And what is the price?
You looked at the history and you said this. This is wrong, the way
he's been portrayed.
I thought it was a lot more complicated and nuanced than the popular
picture of Cromwell. I wanted to put the spotlight on him and I wanted
to
Ask my reader or our audience. Well, what would you do if you were
him? Just walk a mile in his shoes and then see what you think. Mantle
says she grounded her fiction in years of research. I think that
and imaginative writer four stage or
Novel has a step still has a responsibility to that reader. And that
responsibility is to get the history right. You want to do that?
Absolutely. That's the absolute foundation of what I do.
I begin to imagine at the point where the facts run out, But like
a historian, I'm working on the great, marshy ground of interpretation,
which historians do. But also you're saying novelists. Exactly. We
all share the same sources. We share this in facts. The question
is, where do we stand to view them?
I sometimes think back. Those two
The day when I began because it's very vivid in my mind, writing
the first paragraph and having that feeling
By the time I was halfway down the first page
This is the best thing you've ever done. I was walking around with
a big grin. Do you want to see my first page?
From that first page to the very last one. Hilary Mantel completed