Mantels

My earliest reading memoryDad would read Winnie-the-Pooh to me, doing all the voices. He did a particularly excellent Rabbit.My favourite book growing upI was 11 when I found A Traveller in Time by Alison Uttley in my new school library. Published in 1939, it tells the story of Penelope, a dreamer who can move between the centuries, becoming enfolded in a plot to save Mary, Queen of Scots. To a girl in 90s south-west London, Uttley made it seem absolutely plausible that if I opened my mind enough, I might pass through the…

“What might she have written next?” asked Margaret Atwood in her tribute to Hilary Mantel, after the Booker prize-winning novelist’s sudden death in September last year. “I don’t know, but I will miss it.” In this, she spoke for readers around the world, eagerly awaiting a new book from the author of the Wolf Hall trilogy. Aside from her Cromwell novels, Mantel had a habit of confounding expectations, with each new work so different from its predecessor.We now know the answer to Atwood’s question: Mantel was working on a…