Blog
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Wolf Hall Read Along
Join us in an online group read of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall Trilogy Starting on January 1st 2024, Wolf Hall Weekend will be joining an online group read of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall Trilogy starting with Wolf Hall and following a leisurely and indulgent pace of around forty pages a week. The group is run…
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Wolf Hall Weekend Podcast Launch with Special Guest Dr Owen Emmerson
The Wolf Hall Weekend will feature an amazing lineup of speakers and panel members including Dr Owen Emmerson. We were privileged to speak to Owen last week and explore the topic he will focus on at the weekend in June 2024 at Cadhay House. Here is a recording of that interview, where Owen reveals his…
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The Return of Wolf Hall: ‘The Mirror and the Light’ is finally in production!
The media is awash this week with the exciting news that the TV adaption of Hilary’s final book is in production. Of course the stage production of the novel has sadly been and gone. It was brilliantly scripted by Hilary herself in collaboration with her friend and actor Ben Miles, who reprised his part as…
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The Bard and the Dame – Hilary Mantel’s relationship to Shakespeare on the 400th anniversary of the First Folio
‘I read Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar at the age of ten, and I think that it really set the direction of my future life and my interests; everything that I myself would try to be as a writer.’ Dame Hilary Mantel ‘There is a Shakespearean quality to Mantel’s writing: the mixture of low and high discourse,…
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Hilary’s Horrible Henry VIII
“Henry VIII is a monster, but he’s our monster. No other nation has a king who had six wives and cut the heads off two. We’re perversely proud of Henry.” – Hilary Mantel Hilary Mantel brings a deeply reasoned perspective on Henry VIII, as she does with all the characters in her Wolf Hall Trilogy. She gives us…
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Being Anne Boleyn
“Anne Boleyn doesn’t know she was going to have her head lopped off by a swordsman from Calais,” says Peter Kosminsky in a British Film Institute panel discussion about the Wolf Hall TV series, that he so brilliantly directed. You can watch an excerpt of the wonderful panel discussion here: On the same panel are…
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Hilary Mantel’s Latest Book is published today!
Hilary Mantel – A Memoir of My Former Self – A life in writing. Nicholas Pearson – Hilary’s longtime editor writes in the forward of this last but essential book: ‘She was a writer at the peak of her powers, one for whom fresh creative vistas were just opening up’. From her unique childhood to…
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Hilary Mantel Memorial Bench: A fitting tribute to a literary treasure
by David Holland Last week, on September 22nd (2023) I had the privilege to be present at the presentation of a memorial bench to honor the late Dame Hilary Mantel in Budleigh Salterton, Devon. The bench was presented to the town’s Mayor, David Hayward, by the Budleigh Salterton Literary Festival. The date coincided with the…
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Hilary Mantel: remembering the acclaimed novelist on the first anniversary of her death
by David Holland I am still coming to terms with the fact that it’s twelve months since Hilary died so suddenly a year ago on September 22, 2022. I’m also pleased I decided to press on and organise the Wolf Hall Weekend (June 22-23, 2024) in her honour. I have been overwhelmed by the support…
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On This Day: September 1, 1532, Anne Boleyn was created the Marquess of Pembroke
Anne Boleyn is one of the most controversial women in English history; we argue over her, we pity and admire and revile her, we reinvent her in every generation. Hilary Mantel King Henry VIII was planning a trip to France to meet with the French King, and he wanted to take Anne Boleyn with him…