Mirror and the Light
‘It is a book not read, but lived’ Telegraph
‘Her Cromwell novels are, for my money, the greatest English novels of this century’ Observer
‘If you cannot speak truth at a beheading, when can you speak it?’
The Mirror & The Light begins after the death of Anne Boleyn. As her remains are bundled into oblivion, Thomas Cromwell breakfasts with the victors. The blacksmith’s son has knocked down everyone in his path: established at the right hand of Henry VIII, he is the second man in England. But what will you do, an astute witness asks, when the king turns on you, as sooner or later he turns on everyone close to him?
Heralded as the greatest English novels of this century, the Wolf Hall trilogy has won two Booker Prizes and been adapted into hugely successful stage plays. The first two books, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, were transformed into a BAFTA- and Golden Globe-winning BBC television series, starring Mark Rylance and Damian Lewis. The cast now returns in the long-awaited concluding series, Wolf Hall: The Mirror & the Light.
A Guardian Book of the Year • A Times Book of the Year • A Daily Telegraph Book of the Year • A Sunday Times Book of the Year • A New Statesman Book of the Year • A Spectator Book of the Year
Sunday Times Bestseller (08/03/2020)
Dame Hilary Mantel was one of the greatest English novelists of our time, best known for her epic The Wolf Hall Trilogy. She won the Man Booker Prize twice, for Wolf Hall and its sequel Bring Up the Bodies, which also won the 2012 Costa Book of the Year. The conclusion of the trilogy, The Mirror & the Light, was an instant number one bestseller and winner of the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, which she had also won for Wolf Hall. Mantel is the author of fourteen other acclaimed books, including A Place of Greater Safety, Beyond Black, the memoir Giving Up the Ghost and the short story collection The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher.