“My childhood gave me a very powerful sense of being spooked. I didn't know whether what I was seeing were sensory images of other people's unhappiness. Perhaps that was just the way the world manifested itself to me.”

British writer

Dame Hilary Mary Mantel was a British writer best known for historical fiction, as well as memoir and short stories. Her work ranged across several forms, and she published from the mid-1980s onward. Her first novel, Every Day Is Mother's Day, appeared in 1985. Over her career she wrote 12 novels, two short story collections, a memoir, and many articles and opinion pieces.