Dame Hilary Mantel: Derbyshire's Wolf Hall author dies 'suddenly' aged 70

The award winning Derbyshire author has died aged 70, her publisher HarperCollins has confirmed.

A spokesperson said: “We are heartbroken at the death of our beloved author, Dame Hilary Mantel, and our thoughts are with her friends and family, especially her husband, Gerald. This is a devastating loss and we can only be grateful she left us with such a magnificent body of work.”

Dame Hilary, who was born in Glossop and debuted with Every Day is Mother’s Day in 1985, has received the Booker Prize twice.

‘Wolf Hall’ published in 2009, telling a fictionalised biography of the rise of Thomas Cromwell under the reign of Henry VIII, won her the first Booker Prize.

It was the first book in a trilogy about the life and ultimate fall of the Tudor figure.

A sequel, Bring Up The Bodies, was published in 2012 and also won the Booker Prize - making Dame Hilary a two -time winner of the prestigious award.

The third and final book in the Thomas Cromwell series - The Mirror and the Light - was released in 2020 and won the 2021 Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction.

Nicholas Pearson, former Publishing Director of 4th Estate and Dame Hilary’s long-term editor said: “The news of Hilary’s death is devastating to her friends and everyone who worked with her.”

He revealed she had been working on a new book, saying: “Only last month I sat with her on a sunny afternoon in Devon, while she talked excitedly about the new novel she had embarked on. Dame Hilary’s cause of death has not yet been confirmed.