Waterstones has arranged an exclusive edition of Booker Prize winner Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror & the Light.
Hilary Mantel has already been awarded the Booker Prize twice. The first time was for her 2009 novel Wolf Hall, a fictional account of Thomas Cromwell’s rise to power in the court of Henry VIII. The secondly was for her 2012 follow-up novel, Bring Up the Bodies.
Now the thrilling conclusion is here in the shape of The Mirror & the Light. Some may be asking – will Mantel pick up a third Booker Prize?
The Waterstones Interview with Hilary Mantel
What the third book does is to take us through the final four years of Thomas Cromwell’s life, taking up the story at the moment of Anne Boleyn’s execution and watching his triumphant rise and his successive overcoming of obstacles and enemies to the point where the king creates him Earl of Essex and his son Gregory has married into the royal family and he’s reached a position of unprecedented power. And I try to show how whilst in the earlier books the narrative may work to a crisis, we now have a crisis every day. The pressure as well as the glory is intensified in the third book and then Cromwell’s fall is very… it’s quick, it’s mysterious. None of the existing theories cover it. It can’t be covered. There are things that we will never understand. The processes of government and administration are there on the record. But the process of politics is a hidden process. And the reader will, I think, come to their own conclusions. I’m not trying to point to a certain event in Conwell’s life and say that’s where he went wrong. Or he could have done this or this differently. I think that’s far too simple a reading. But I’m hoping to open up the story so that the reader can see the full complexity of what was going on. And I am in certain respects cutting against the orthodox account, not because I know better, I don’t know better, but because I think differently. And that is because I’m entering into a dramatic process with the characters rather than sitting in judgment like God looking down on it all. Or a historian looking with the advantage of hindsight.
Hilary Mantel: The Waterstones Interview – Wolf Hall Trilogy
Mantel vs Thatcher
In an interview published in The Guardian, September 2014, Mantel confessed to fantasizing about the murder of Margaret Thatcher. This had taken place in 1983. She fictionalized the event in a short story called “The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher: 6 August 1983”.
What writer has not written a short story based on idle daydreams? However, for Mantel, this was to produce some amazing free publicity. Allies of Thatcher called for a police investigation. You really cannot make it up. Especially in the current climate with the selfsame party being on the receiving end of a police investigation.
Mantel reportedly responded, “bringing in the police for an investigation was beyond anything I could have planned or hoped for, because it immediately exposes them to ridicule.” I could not have said it better myself.
I can only imagine that Mantel’s views on politics (and her controversial comment about the royal family that upset Prime Minister David Cameron) it is not hard to see why Mantel was drawn to exploring historical political figures. Given the two (yes two) Booker Prize awards so far for the series, it may be safe to say Mantel knows what she is doing in that regard.
The Mirror & the Light
From a bloodied and tormented child on the rough-and-ready streets of Putney, to the service of the country’s most rich and powerful, Thomas Cromwell has ascended to the highest echelons of Henry VIII’s tumultuous court. He has survived the fall of Cardinal Wolsey and inveigled his way into the King’s confidence, overseen the overthrow of two queens and taken revenge on those who betrayed his former master.
Waterstones Overview – Wolf Hall Trilogy
Which sets up matters for part 3 – The Mirror & the Light.
Now all of England lies at his feet, ripe for innovation and religious reform. But as fortune’s wheel turns, Cromwell’s enemies are gathering in the shadows and the question remains: how long can anyone survive under Henry’s cruel and capricious gaze?
Waterstones Overview – Wolf Hall Trilogy
Hilary Mantel’s new book, The Mirror & the Light, is published by HarperCollins.
The Waterstones’ Exclusive Edition contains exclusive extra material, including an essay by Hilary Mantel about the historical settings of the Wolf Hall trilogy.