The Wolf Hall Picture Book

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Very few writers manage not just to excavate the sedimented remains of the past, but bring them up again into the light and air so that they shine brightly once more before us. Hilary Mantel has done just that’ Simon Schama, Financial Times The first half of the novel, built around Wolsey's fall from power, details Cromwell's domestic setup at Austin Friars and introduces the major players in Tudor politics. Without clobbering the reader with the weight of her research, Mantel works up a 16th-century world in which only a joker would call for cherries in April or lettuce in December, and where hearing an unlicensed preacher is an illicit thrill on a par with risking syphilis. The civil wars that brought the Tudors to the throne still make older people shudder, bringing Henry's obsession with producing a male heir into focus. And the precarious nature of early modern life is brought home by the abrupt deaths of Cromwell's wife and daughters, carried off by successive epidemics in moving but unsentimentally staged scenes. Cromwell asks if he can bury his elder daughter with a copybook she's written her name in; "the priest says he has never heard of such a thing".

The Wolf Hall Picture Book by Hilary Mantel, Ben Miles The Wolf Hall Picture Book by Hilary Mantel, Ben Miles

At the very beginning of the twentieth century, Zola said, ''In my view you cannot claim to have really seen something till you have photographed it.'' The act of photographing, at least for a moment, distinguishes its object and estranges it from its context . . . Every stroke of the pen releases a thousand pictures inside the writer's head. This book has made some of them visible.' Hilary Mantel HarperCollins confirmed she had died on Thursday “suddenly yet peacefully”, surrounded by close family and friends. The result is a collection of ambiguous, disquieting images in which the present rubs up against the past, accompanied by excerpts from the novels, some taken from deleted scenes that, thrillingly for Mantel fans, have never before been released. Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies were adapted for a Royal Shakespeare Company stage production in 2013, a process in which the author was very involved. In 2021 The Mirror & the Light was staged in London’s Gielgud Theatre, adapted by Mantel herself, alongside the actor Ben Miles, who also starred. Forgotten the title or the author of a book? Our BookSleuth is specially designed for you. Visit BookSleuthThe act of photographing, at least for a moment, distinguishes its object and estranges it from its context… Bill Hamilton, who was Mantel’s agent throughout her career, said it had been “the greatest privilege” to work with the writer. “Her wit, stylistic daring, creative ambition and phenomenal historical insight mark her out as one of the greatest novelists of our time.” La librairie sera fermée le 1er novembre pour cause de jour férié. Les activités reprendront le lendemain. She saw and felt things us ordinary mortals missed,’ her agent says of Booker prize-winning author who died on Thursday

The Wolf Hall Picture Book by Mantel, Hilary 0008530343 - The Wolf Hall Picture Book by Mantel, Hilary

It is the making of our English world, and who can fail to be stirred by it?’ Helen Dunmore, author of Birdcage Walk To date the Wolf Hall trilogy has sold more than five million copies worldwide and has been translated into 41 languages. Earlier this month HarperCollins published The Wolf Hall Picture Book, a photography book by Mantel and co-authors Ben Miles and George Miles.In 1990 she was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature; in 2006 she was awarded a CBE and in 2014 a DBE. I think simply because I prize the long view so much. And that’s why I won’t make the parallels. I think that if you do, it turns real people into these kind of fantasy figures and unfortunately, they’re not. They’re real, present and dangerous.” Mantel's Cromwell is an omnicompetent figure, "at home in courtroom or waterfront, bishop's palace or inn yard. He can draft a contract, train a falcon, draw a map, stop a street fight, furnish a house and fix a jury." Fluent in many languages, learned, witty and thoughtful, he's also an intimidating physical presence; Wolsey fondly compares him to "one of those square-shaped fighting dogs that low men tow about on ropes". This makes him an ideal emissary for Wolsey's project of liquidating some smaller monasteries to fund a school and an Oxford college. But self-advancement isn't Cromwell's only motive. He's disgusted by the waste and superstition he encounters, and takes a materialist view of relics and indulgences. The feudal mindset of Wolsey's rival grandees seems equally outdated to him: jibes at his lowly origins bounce off his certainty that noble blood and feats of arms now count for less than lines of credit and nicely balanced books. Hers are books that refuse to shy away from the underside of life … Hilary Mantel is one of our bravest as well as our most brilliant writers’ Olivia Laing, Observer