Hilary Mantel on Front Row

 

    On last evening's edition of Radio 4's Front Row, Mark Lawson was talking to Hilary Mantel, the entire programme being devoted to the interview which is now available to listen to on iPlayer.

    Entertaining and enlightening as ever, Hilary Mantel reveals that before Wolf Hall brought her a new level of fame, a typical reaction on the part of those meeting her for the first time and learning she was a novelist was, "should I have heard of you?"

    She talks of journeys by public transport giving her mind necessary "moments of vacancy", valuable in terms of the ideas that being away from her sources and the manuscript itself typically generates. Answering Mark Lawson's point about whether there can be real tension in a book such as Wolf Hall and its sequel Bring up the Bodies in which the reader, already apprised of historical fact, knows what is going to happen, she says that it is seeing the turning points which determine a fate - and they are on almost every page - that is as powerful in terms of suspense as not knowing what that fate is to be.