Hilary Mantel: Experiments in Love

About this episode

This episode features a conversation with Hilary Mantel, exploring her writing process and character development prior to her later successes.

Hilary Mantel's sudden death in 2022 at the age of 70 shocked the literary world and fans of her Wolf Hall Trilogy, which was a publishing phenomenon. In this wide-ranging conversation recorded in Toronto in 1997, Mantel's best-known works were yet to come and as Randy Boyagoda notes in the introduction, you as a listener wish you could reach in and tell her that her peak as a writer still lay in the future. With an excellent host at the helm, Canadian writer Rosemary Sullivan, this lovely conversation gives a real sense of what shaped Hilary Mantel's approach to writing, her unique and complex characters and the thoughtful ways she blends research with good old-fashioned storytelling.

People in this episode

Host: Randy Boyagoda

Guest: Hilary Mantel

Topics covered

• Hilary Mantel
• Wolf Hall Trilogy
• writing
• literary conversation

Keywords

• literature
• authors
• storytelling
• character development

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Wolf Hall Trilogy

Places: Toronto

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