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Read by: Ben Miles
Running Time: 38 hrs 15 mins
Categories: Historical Fiction
Released: 2020
Media: mp3 on 3 CDs; Unabridged
ISBN: 9781427289520
Dame Hilary Mary Mantel (born Thompson; 6 July 1952 – 22 September 2022) was a British writer whose work includes historical fiction, personal memoirs and short stories. She went on to write 12 novels, two collections of short stories, a personal memoir, and numerous articles and opinion pieces.
Mantel won the Booker Prize twice: the first was for her 2009 novel Wolf Hall, a fictional account of Thomas Cromwell's rise to power in the court of Henry VIII, and the second was for its 2012 sequel Bring Up the Bodies. The third installment of the Cromwell trilogy, The Mirror and the Light, was long listed for the same prize.The trilogy has gone on to sell more than 5 million copies.Mantel's first novel, Every Day Is Mother's Day, was published in 1985, and its sequel, Vacant Possession, a year later. After returning to England, she became the film critic of The Spectator, a position she held from 1987 to 1991, and a reviewer for a number of papers and magazines in Britain and the United States.
In 2003 Mantel published her memoir, Giving Up the Ghost, which won the MIND "Book of the Year" award. That same year she brought out a collection of short stories, Learning To Talk. All the stories deal with childhood and, taken together, the books show how the events of a life are mediated as fiction. Her 2005 novel, Beyond Black, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize and long listed for the Booker Prize in 2005. Novelist Pat Barker said it was "the book that should actually have won the Booker". Set in the late 1990s and early 2000s, it features a professional medium, Alison Hart, whose calm and jolly exterior conceals grotesque psychic damage. She trails around with her a troupe of "fiends", who are invisible but always on the verge of becoming flesh.
The long novel Wolf Hall, about Henry VIII's Minister Thomas Cromwell, was published in 2009 to critical acclaim. The book won that year's Booker Prize and, upon winning the award, Mantel said, "I can tell you at this moment I am happily flying through the air". Judges voted three to two in favour of Wolf Hall for the prize. Mantel was presented with a trophy and a £50,000 cash prize during an evening ceremony at the Guildhall, London. The panel of judges, led by the broadcaster James Naughtie, described Wolf Hall as an "extraordinary piece of storytelling". Leading up to the award, the book was backed as the favourite by bookmakers and accounted for 45% of the sales of all the nominated books. It was the first favourite since 2002 to win the award.
The sequel to Wolf Hall, called Bring Up the Bodies, was published in May 2012 to wide acclaim. It won the 2012 Costa Book of the Year and the 2012 Booker Prize; Mantel thus became the first British writer and the first woman to win the Booker Prize more than once. Mantel was the fourth author to receive the award twice, following J. M. Coetzee, Peter Carey and J. G. Farrell. This award also made Mantel the first author to win the award for a sequel.[ The books were adapted into plays by the Royal Shakespeare Company and were produced as a mini-series by BBC.In 2020 Mantel published the third novel of the Thomas Cromwell trilogy, called The Mirror and the Light. The Mirror and the Light was selected for the long list for the 2020 Booker Prize.
Throughout her twenties, Mantel was mis-diagnosed as having a psychiatric illness, which led to her being medicated with anti-psychotic drugs. unnecessarily.
Mantel died on 22 September 2022, aged 70, at a hospital in Exeter from complications of a stroke that occurred three days earlier.
“If you cannot speak truth at a beheading, when can you speak it?”
With The Mirror & the Light, Hilary Mantel brings to a triumphant close the Wolf Hall trilogy she began with her peerless, Booker Prize-winning novels, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies.
She
traces the final years of Thomas Cromwell, the boy from nowhere who
climbs to the heights of power, offering a defining portrait of predator
and prey, of a ferocious contest between present and past, between
royal will and a common man’s vision: of a modern nation making itself
through conflict, passion and courage.
The story begins in May
1536: Anne Boleyn is dead, decapitated in the space of a heartbeat by a
hired French executioner. As her remains are bundled into oblivion,
Cromwell breakfasts with the victors. The blacksmith’s son from Putney
emerges from the spring’s bloodbath to continue his climb to power and
wealth, while his formidable master, Henry VIII, settles to short-lived
happiness with his third queen, Jane Seymour.
Cromwell, a man
with only his wits to rely on, has no great family to back him, no
private army. Despite rebellion at home, traitors plotting abroad and
the threat of invasion testing Henry’s regime to the breaking point,
Cromwell’s robust imagination sees a new country in the mirror of the
future. All of England lies at his feet, ripe for innovation and
religious reform.
But as fortune’s wheel turns, Cromwell’s
enemies are gathering in the shadows. The inevitable question remains:
how long can anyone survive under Henry’s cruel and capricious gaze?
Eagerly awaited and eight years in the making, The Mirror & the Light
completes Cromwell’s journey from self-made man to one of the most
feared, influential figures of his time. Portrayed by Mantel with pathos
and terrific energy, Cromwell is as complex as he is unforgettable: a
politician and a fixer, a husband and a father, a man who both defied
and defined his age.
Reviews
"The many listeners enthralled by the earlier two volumes in Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall trilogy will find all their expectations met in this final installment... Here is a narrative achievement of the highest order." — AudioFile Magazine, Earphones Award winner
"Miles’
familiarity with Mantel’s portrayal of Cromwell pervades his
performance of The Mirror & the Light, which traces Cromwell’s fall
from greatness, beginning with the aftermath of Anne Boleyn’s beheading
and ending with his own. Miles’ voice carries the power-hungry
statesman’s monumental final act with ease and a delicate nuance, as
only someone with a deep understanding of the story could." - BookPage
"Ben
Miles — Group Captain Peter Townsend in “The Crown” — has, in addition
to narrating this final volume, taken on the massive task of delivering
“Wolf Hall” and “Bring up the Bodies,” as well. He also played Cromwell
in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of “Wolf Hall Parts One
& Two,” and captures again the man’s voice, its taint of baseness,
its ups and downs and quiet ruthlessness." -- Washington Post
On Media
Audiobook on 3 CD-ROMs, complete with artwork on the CDs. Supplied in windowed CD sleeves, no case provided.
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