Hilary Mantel
Hilary Mantel
Dame Hilary Mary Mantel, DBE FRSL, is an English writer whose work includes personal memoirs, short stories, and historical fiction...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth6 July 1952
writing wind paper
When you have committed enough words to paper, you feel you have a spine stiff enough to stand up in the wind. But when you stop writing, you find that's all you are - a spine, a row of rattling vertebrae, dried out like an old quill pen.
writing years firsts
'Show up at the desk' is one of the first rules of writing, but for 'Wolf Hall' I was about 30 years late.
real people historical
Much historical fiction that centers on real people has always been deficient in information, lacking in craft and empty in affect.
people different world
Like every writer, I'm drawn by unlikely juxtapositions, precisely-dated and once-only collisions between people from different worlds.
vices hindsight historian
Hindsight is the historian's necessary vice.
facts too-much imaginative
For many imaginative writers, working for the press is a fact of their life. But it's best not to like it too much.
lying commitment writing
Fear of commitment lies behind the fear of writing.
way ruts world
As a writer, you owe it to yourself not to get stuck in a rut of looking at the world in a certain way.
book answers should
A novel should be a book of questions, not a book of answers.
history giving events
History offers us vicarious experience. It allows the youngest student to possess the ground equally with his elders; without a knowledge of history to give him a context for present events, he is at the mercy of every social misdiagnosis handed to him.
ambition boys careers
My first career ambitions involved turning into a boy; I intended to be either a railway guard or a knight errant.
reading self judging
But an experienced reader is also a self-aware and critical reader. I can't remember ever reading a story without judging it.
procrastination imagination privilege
Imagination only comes when you privilege the subconscious, when you make delay and procrastination work for you.
children memories grandmother
I'm one of these children who grew up at the knee of my grandmother and her elder sister, listening to very old people talk about their memories.