Hilary Mantel, the British author of “Wolf Hall,” “Bring Up the Bodies,” and “The Mirror and the Light,” her trilogy based on Thomas Cromwell’s life, died on Thursday in an Exeter hospital. She was 70 years old.
Hilary Mantel dies: Cause of death revealed
Bill Hamilton, her longtime literary agent, announced her death following a stroke. Mr. Hamilton added, “She had so many wonderful novels ahead of her,” adding that Ms. Mantel was writing on one at the time of her death. “It’s just a huge loss for literature,” he continued.
Ms. Mantel was a well-known author in the United Kingdom.
She was awarded the Booker Prize twice, once for “Wolf Hall” and once for “Bring Up the Bodies,” both of which sold millions of copies.
She was again nominated for the same award in 2020 for “The Mirror and the Light.”
In a 2020 review of “The Mirror and the Light,” Parul Sehgal, a former book reviewer for The New York Times, stated that Ms. Mantel’s language envelops the reader “in the sweep of a narrative filled with conquest, intrigue, and mazy human psychology.”
Ms. Mantel was an expert in portraying “what power exposes and conceals in human nature,” according to Ms. Sehgal, not merely a writer of historical fiction.
