Kathryn Hughes

Interview: Hilary Mantel

Shortly after Hilary Mantel’s name was announced as the winner of this year’s Man Booker Prize for Wolf Hall, a smiling acquaintance hove into view with profuse congratulations. ‘Now this person dislikes me and my work,’ explains Mantel to me a few weeks later, ‘so the moment had a particularly strained quality. I thought to myself “I’m going to remember this moment and use it later.”’

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