The death of Dame Hilary Mantel brings an end to one of the most remarkable literary careers of the last half century. Her great historical trilogy, Wolf Hall, earned her two Booker prizes, dominating the cultural landscape of the early 21st century – on page, stage and television – for almost as long as her protagonist, Thomas Cromwell, reigned over the political one of the 16th.
She gave readers permission to look afresh at this most overworked period of history: not only at Cromwell himself, who was previously mainly known as the portly subject of a sombre Holbein portrait, but Henry VIII and all of the courtiers who surrounded him. Her scepticism about the saintliness of Sir Thomas More ruffled more than a few feathers.
