Mantel Pieces: The New Book from The Sunday Times Best Selling Author of the Wolf Hall Trilogy

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When Hilary Mantel first began to write for the London Review of Books in 1987 she warned the editor that she had “no critical training whatsoever”. “Thank goodness,” you think. What Mantel has instead are much more useful qualities: a researcher’s in-depth grasp of every topic she writes about, fearlessness, originality and robust common sense. Her wide-ranging pieces, spanning three decades, are the best kind of critical writing, rich with recondite knowledge, wearing their learning lightly. There is, therefore, a temptation to write afterthoughts into these pieces, to embellish them with later and better thinking. I have not done that, but left them as they were--mantelpieces littered with to-do lists, and messages form people I used to be.” From the Introduction Sublime, as you'd expect. What is new, however, is that when she sinks her teeth into a subject, she's brutal: “Our heroine is charmless, foul-mouthed [...] We know that in this film we are seeing the real Madonna - for we know from her other films that she cannot act”. The essays that shine through all focalise on misogyny - the infamous Royal Bodies, the Hair Shirt Sisterhood, and Britain's Last Witch; she takes figures of history who have been mythologised, and dissects the phallocentric iconography that has warped their image. And as someone who is still haunted by periods of physical and mental ill health, Meeting The Devil is the essay that lingers in my mind with a spectral quality. She writes about the visceral and mental aspects of pain so well: The Murder of James Bulger – what does a murder and the children’s crusade have in common? The question ‘at what age are children responsible for the things they do, especially the horrific things they sometimes do’.

For those suffering from Tudor withdrawal, there are pieces on Jane Boleyn, Charles Brandon, and Margaret Pole. Despite her protestations to the contrary "I am forced to be more brisk and breezy than scholarly". Mantel is no slouch in critiquing some dry sounding history books: While this essay was written and published well before Meghan married Harry, Mantel’s comments about how Kate is perceived in some ways predict some of the vitriol directed toward Meghan (the majority of the vitriol can be “explained” by racism). A royal body, a female royal body, is only of interest because it is something that has no personality. Meghan has personality in spades. We know Meghan reads. I will never read most of the twenty books that make up the substance of Mantel Pieces but that doesn’t matter. Each review is a little jewel in itself - exhaustively researched and written in clean, lucid prose. The most famous essay in this collection of pieces that Mantel wrote from the London Review of Books is Mantel’s “Royal Bodies”. The response to this essay was in part anger, in particular because of a description of Kate Middleton that describes as a “jointed doll on which certain rags are hung . . . a shop-window mannequin with no personality of her own, entirely define by what she wore” (269) and “Kate seems to have been selected for her role of princess because she was irreproachable: as painfully thin as anyone could wish” (271) and perhaps most damningly “What does Kate read? It’s a question” (271).

Mantel Pieces: The New Book from The Sunday Times Best Mantel Pieces: The New Book from The Sunday Times Best

The debilitating pain of her endometriosis was initially treated with antipsychotics & then abdominal surgery that left her infertile, treated with steroids that transformed her body. ⠀ Our selection of mantels are the perfect way to finish off your fireplace and create a feature wall in your room. Her awareness of her own body makes her acutely aware of others, as when she considers the ill health of Henry VIII. "Historians &, I'm afraid, doctors, underestimate what chronic pain can do to sour the temper & wear away both the personality and the intellect."⠀The author is, of course, quite brilliant on the Tudors and the various iterations of Henry VIII, from strapping young prince (“Hooray Henry”), through pious apostate (“Holy Henry”) to tyrannical Bluebeard (“Horrid Henry”). But she also argues persuasively that the ageing and increasingly irascible king fits the picture for McLeod syndrome, the symptoms of which include progressive muscular weakness in the lower body, depression, paranoia, and an erosion of personality – which would make the tragedy of his reign “not a moral but a biological tragedy, inscribed on the body”. In his later years Henry suffered from osteomyelitis, an infection in the bone of the leg. ‘Historians,’ says Mantel writes, ‘and, I’m afraid, doctors, underestimate what chronic pain can do to sour the temper and wear away both the personality and the intellect.’ I found every review interesting, even if I thought the book itself wouldn’t be for me. For example, the first review was of Shere Hite’s 1988 effort 'Women and Love'. I’m familiar with Ms Hite’s work from the days when I worked in a bookstore, in California. Mantel nails Hite succinctly calling her work “an uneasy blend of prurience and pedantry”. Ouch! Or, iconoclastically titling the review of Chris Anderson’s book 'In Bed with Madonna' as 'Plain Girl’s Revenge Made Flesh'. Anderson's book begins, as it should, with the prodigal, the violent, the gross. But what do you expect? Madonna's wedding was different from other people's. Overall, what I enjoyed most was her approach to writing about history, summed up for me in these two quotes: