Hilary Mantel, double Booker winner and Wolf Hall trilogy author, dies aged 70

Double Booker prize winner Dame Hilary Mantel, best known for the Wolf Hall trilogy, has died aged 70. 

Literary agency A M Heath and her publisher HarperCollins said she died “suddenly and peacefully” on 22nd September surrounded by close family and friends.

Mantel, the author of 17 acclaimed books, was born in Glossop, Derbyshire, England on 6th July 1952. She studied Law at the London School of Economics and Sheffield University. She was employed as a social worker, and lived in Botswana for five years, followed by four years in Saudi Arabia, before returning to Britain in the mid-1980s. Mantel married geologist Gerald McEwen on September 23rd, 1972.

In 1990 she was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, in 2006 awarded a CBE and in 2014 she was appointed DBE. She was patron of Scene and Heard, a theatrical mentoring project, governor of RSC and president of the Budleigh Festival.

She has sold 2.5 million books for £23.4m via Nielsen BookScan in the UK, with Wolf Hall (4th Estate) among the biggest-selling Booker winners of the Nielsen BookScan era, on 1.09 million copies sold across all editions. Wolf Hall was followed with Bring Up the Bodies, which also won the Booker Prize in 2012. The final book in the trilogy, The Mirror & the Light, was released in March 2020 to huge acclaim.

Bill Hamilton, Mantel’s agent at A M Heath, said: “I first met Hilary in 1984 after she sent in the manuscript of Every Day is Mother’s Day. It has been the greatest privilege to work with her through the whole of her career, and to see all the elements that made her unique come together spectacularly in the Wolf Hall Trilogy. Her wit, stylistic daring, creative ambition and phenomenal historical insight mark her out as one of the greatest novelists of our time. She will be remembered for her enormous generosity to other budding writers, her capacity to electrify a live audience, and the huge array of her journalism and criticism, producing some of the finest commentary on issues and books.  

“Emails from Hilary were sprinkled with bon mots and jokes as she observed the world with relish and pounced on the lazy or absurd and nailed cruelty and prejudice. There was always a slight aura of otherworldliness about her, as she saw and felt things us ordinary mortals missed, but when she perceived the need for confrontation she would fearlessly go into battle. And all of that against the backdrop of chronic health problems, which she dealt with so stoically. We will miss her immeasurably, but as a shining light for writers and readers she leaves an extraordinary legacy. Our thoughts go out to her beloved husband Gerald, family and friends.”

Nicholas Pearson, former publishing director of Fourth Estate and Mantel’s long-term editor, who left the publisher earlier this year, added: “The news of Hilary’s death is devastating to her friends and everyone who worked with her. Hilary had a unique outlook on the world – she picked it apart and revealed how it works in both her contemporary and historical novels – every book an unforgettable weave of luminous sentences, unforgettable characters and remarkable insight. She seemed to know everything. For a long time she was critically admired, but the Wolf Hall Trilogy found her the vast readership she long deserved. Read her late books, but read her early books too, which are similarly daring and take the reader to strange places.

“As a person Hilary was kind and generous and loving, always a great champion of other writers. She was a joy to work with. Only last month I sat with her on a sunny afternoon in Devon, while she talked excitedly about the new novel she had embarked on. That we won’t have the pleasure of any more of her words is unbearable. What we do have is a body of work that will be read for generations. We must be grateful for that. I will miss her and my thoughts are with her husband Gerald.”

Charlie Redmayne, c.e.o. at HarperCollins, said: “This is terrible, tragic news and we are filled with sorrow for Hilary’s family and friends, especially her devoted husband Gerald. We are so proud that Fourth Estate and HarperCollins were Hilary’s publisher, and for such a peerless body of work. A writer to the core, Hilary was one of the greatest of her generation – a serious, fearless novelist with huge empathy for her subjects. Who else could have brought Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII and the huge cast of the Wolf Hall Trilogy to life with such insight, frailty and humanity but her? We will all miss Hilary’s company, her wisdom, her humour, and treasure her incredible literary legacy – she will be read as long as people are still reading.”