‘Wolf Hall’ author Hilary Mantel has died at the age of 70

Hilary Mantel, the double Booker Prize-winning British novelist best known for books Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, has died. she was 70

Her death, believed to be sudden, was confirmed by her publishers 4th Estate Books and HarperCollins UK on Friday afternoon local time.

In an identical statement shared on social media, 4th Estate Books and HarperCollins wrote: “We are heartbroken at the passing of our beloved author Dame Hilary Mantel and our thoughts are with her friends and family, especially her husband Gerald. It is a devastating loss and we can only be grateful that she left us such a great body of work.”

Mantel is one of Britain’s most celebrated authors. Although she has written more than a dozen books, over the last 15 years she has found international acclaim most notably with her landmark Tudor drama Wolf Hall – which, directed by Peter Kosminsky and starring Mark Rylance and Damian, has become an award-winning BBC drama transformed Lewis – and its sequel, Bring Up the Bodies, both of which won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction.

According to HarperCollins UK, Mantel is the first British author and the first woman to win two Booker Prizes. Mantel is also the only author to have won with two consecutive novels.

A cause of death has not yet been given, although Mantel has been active in recent months, even taking part in a “Questionnaire” interview with London’s Financial Times published on September 10. Asked which trait she finds most “irritating” to others, the author quipped: “Toryism.”

However, when asked about her fitness, Mantel, who reportedly had long-term endometriosis, replied: “When I was little, a rude doctor called me ‘Little Miss Neverwell.’ Now I am Great Dame Neverwell. My health is unpredictable and a daily source of tension. But I’m always looking for improvements.”

Born in north Derbyshire in 1952, Mantel was educated at a convent school in Cheshire. She attended the London School of Economics and Sheffield University, where she studied law.

After graduating from university, Mantel worked for a time as a social worker in a geriatric hospital – experiences that influenced her novels Every Day is Mother’s Day and Vacant Possession.

In 1977, Mantel and her husband Gerald McEwen moved to Botswana and in 1982 to Saudi Arabia. The author’s third novel, Eight Months on Ghazzah Street, is set in Jeddah.

Mantel returned to the UK in 1986 and worked for a time as a film critic for The Spectator. Her novel Fludd has won several UK awards, while her fifth novel A Place of Greater Safety won the Sunday Express Book of the Year Award.

However, Mantel became a global sensation with “Wolf Hall,” which won the Man Booker Prize in 2009. The book, based on Mantel’s extensive, years-long research into the Tudor period, is a fictionalized biography of Thomas Cromwell and his rise to power at the court of Henry VIII. The 2015 BBC drama starred Rylance Cromwell, while Lewis portrayed Henry VIII. The BAFTA-winning and Emmy-nominated show, which aired on PBS’s Masterpiece in the US, was also the breakthrough for The Crown star Claire Foy, who played Anne Boleyn.

The Wolf Hall sequel Bring Up the Bodies won the 2012 Man Booker Prize, while the author’s most recent work and the conclusion of the trilogy, The Mirror and the Light, was longlisted for the Man Booker.

Mantel was made a Commander of the British Empire in 2006 and a Dame in 2014. She is survived by her husband McEwen for nearly 50 years. The couple married in 1972 and divorced for a few years only to remarry.