Hilary Mantel, English author and critic
Dame Hilary Mary Mantel, ( man-TEL; née Thompson; born 6 July 1952) is a British writer whose work includes historical fiction, personal memoirs and short stories. Mantel has twice been awarded the Booker Prize, the first time for the 2009 novel Wolf Hall, a fictional account of Thomas Cromwell's rise to power in the court of Henry VIII, and secondly for the 2012 novel Bring Up the Bodies, the second instalment of the Cromwell trilogy. Mantel was the first woman and fourth person to receive the award twice, following in the footsteps of J. M. Coetzee, Peter Carey and J. G. Farrell. The third instalment of the trilogy, The Mirror & the Light, was released on 5 March 2020 in the UK and the following July was longlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize.