Hilary Mantel at the Oxford Literary Festival

On Sunday evening, I was lucky enough to see Hilary Mantel (who I often mention on this blog) speak to a packed out crowd at the beautiful Sheldonian theatre as part of the Oxford Literary Festival. She closed what I imagine to have been an amazing string of lectures and talks in spectacular style. Introduced by, and in conversation with the current Bodley librarian Sarah Thomas (the first American, and also the first woman to hold this post), Mantel talked about the series that has brought her most critical acclaim, the Wolf Hall trilogy.

She opened with an extract from the second novel, Bring Out the Bodies, in which Henry VIII's court is brought to an eerie state by Anne Boleyn's decline. Her successor, Jane Seymour is being prepared for her own ascent, in a quietly brutal scene in which her mother dresses her hair with the elaborately and painfully pinned, but apparently puritanical headdress we often see in artistic depictions of her.
Mantel developed this into a consideration of character and visibility; how the outward signs and costumes, both physical and metaphorical, inform narrative. Talking about her protagonist, Thomas Cromwell, she described the process of delving beneath the history and research in order to create a man, above all. She also had some spoilers for the audience for the final installment, The Mirror and the Light, but as I'm a greedy and selfish person, I'll let you find those out from more generous attendees...

She also stressed the importance of books very graciously in the light of being honoured by the Bodley library, one of the most beautiful and important public libraries in the world. Describing fiction as a conversation between the dead and the living, and the living and the dead, she stressed the vitality of the written word, and the book as alive; always lovely to hear in backlash to the digital panic.

If you ever get the chance to hear Mantel speak, leap at it. She had the audience thoroughly engaged; you got the sense of how important a writer she has become, and a sense of the kind of legacy she will leave. I felt really moved by the presentation of the Bodley Medal, which honours outstanding communicators and writers in the literary field, previously awarded to writers such as Seamus Heaney, Alan Bennett, and P.D. James.

If you haven't read Mantel's work, go ahead. Now! I would particularly recommend A Place of Greater Safety, a proper epic about the French Revolution, or Fludd, a quirky novella about a crumbling Northern church.

Hilary, I love you. We should grab an Earl Grey sometime.

Congratulations Hilary Mantel!

This week, Hilary won the Booker Prize for the second instalment in her Tudor trilogy Bring Up the Bodies, a mere 3 years after winning for Wolf Hall.  She joins the novelists Peter Carey, and one of my scared-cow favourite writers, J.M. Coetzee as the only three writers to win the Booker twice; and if you really love to fact-crunch, she's the first female novelist to do so, and the first writer to win for a sequel. What an amazing achievement - many congratulations to her.

Are you pleased to see Bring Up the Bodies lauded? Are you disappointed that your favourite novel missed out? Are you as relieved as I am that you are not her, and you don't face the gargantuan task of writing the third in the trilogy? It's like being born into a family of a Nobel prize winners.

The Booker Shortlist 2012

In case you haven't heard, the Booker Shortlist 2012 has been announced today, and looks like this:

• Tan Twan Eng - The Garden Of Evening Mists (Myrmidon Books)
• Deborah Levy - Swimming Home (And Other Stories/Faber & Faber)
• Hilary Mantel - Bring Up The Bodies (Fourth Estate)
• Alison Moore - The Lighthouse (Salt)
• Will Self - Umbrella (Bloomsbury)
• Jeet Thayil - Narcopolis (Faber & Faber

It must be an exciting day for Hilary Mantel, who is a favourite to take the prize, which will make her the first Brit to win twice - an amazing achievement considering her last win for Wolf Hall is still so fresh in people's minds.Thayil and Moore are both nominated for their fiction debuts, which gives weight to the judges claim that this year is all about the novel rather the novelists: it really seems that they're concentrating on delivering a result that prioritises the work above reputation. I'll admit I haven't got around to really any of the novels either long or shortlisted; but I'm really keen to read Narcopolis and The Garden of Evening Mists.

Any thoughts? Has anyone read any of the titles? Are they worthy candidates for Book of the Year?