26 Facts About Hilary Mantel

Hilary Mantel's first published novel, Every Day Is Mother's Day, was released in 1985.

Hilary Mantel went on to write 12 novels, two collections of short stories, a memoir, and numerous articles and opinion pieces.

Hilary Mantel Mary Thompson was born on 6 July 1952 in Glossop, Derbyshire, the eldest of three children, with two younger brothers, and raised as a Roman Catholic in the mill village of Hadfield, where she attended St Charles Roman Catholic Primary School.

Hilary Mantel's parents, Margaret and Henry Thompson, were both Catholics of Irish descent, born in England.

When Hilary Mantel was seven, her mother's lover, Jack Hilary Mantel, moved in with the family.

Hilary Mantel shared a bedroom with her mother, while her father moved to another room.

Hilary Mantel transferred to the University of Sheffield and graduated as a Bachelor of Jurisprudence in 1973.

In 1977 Hilary Mantel moved with her husband to Botswana, where they lived for the next five years.

Hilary Mantel later said that leaving Jeddah felt like "the happiest day of [her] life".

Hilary Mantel published memoirs of this period in The Spectator, and the London Review of Books.

Hilary Mantel's Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize-winning novel Fludd is set in 1956 in a fictitious northern village called Fetherhoughton, centering on a Roman Catholic church and a convent.

Hilary Mantel came to London to earn money by displaying himself as a freak.

Hilary Mantel's bones hang today in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons.

In 2003, Hilary Mantel published her memoir, Giving Up the Ghost, which won the MIND "Book of the Year" award.

The book won that year's Booker Prize and, upon winning the award, Hilary Mantel said, "I can tell you at this moment I am happily flying through the air".

On receiving the prize, Hilary Mantel said that she would spend the prize money on "sex and drugs and rock' n' roll".

In 2014, Hilary Mantel published a collection of 10 short stories, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, which The Guardian called a "flawed but absorbing selection" singling out the story Sorry to Disturb for praise.

Hilary Mantel wrote reviews and essays, mainly for The Guardian, the London Review of Books and The New York Review of Books.

Hilary Mantel delivered five 2017 Reith Lectures on BBC Radio Four, talking about the theme of historical fiction.

Hilary Mantel's lectures were selected by its producer, Jim Frank, as amongst the best of the long-running series.

At the time of her death in 2022, Hilary Mantel was working on a new novel which was characterized as a "mash-up" of Jane Austen novels.

Hilary Mantel was initially diagnosed with a psychiatric illness, hospitalised, and treated with antipsychotic drugs, which reportedly produced psychotic symptoms.

Hilary Mantel later became patron of the Endometriosis SHE Trust.

Hilary Mantel died on 22 September 2022, aged 70, at a hospital in Exeter from complications of a stroke that occurred three days earlier.

In September 2014, in an interview published in The Guardian, Hilary Mantel said she had fantasised about the murder of the British prime minister Margaret Thatcher in 1983, and fictionalised the event in a short story called "The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher: 6 August 1983".

Hilary Mantel discussed her religious views in her 2003 memoir, Giving Up the Ghost.