This is Fresh Air. I'm Sam Brigger, sitting in for Terry Gross.

Today we remember writer Hillary Mantell, who died last week at the age of 70.

Mantell was best known for her trilogy of novels about Thomas Cromwell, the political fixer for

Henry VIII. She was the first woman to win the Booker Prize twice for the first two of her

Cromwell books, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. The third novel, The Mirror and the Light,

was published in 2020 and was long listed for the same prize. Mantell wrote 14 other books,

including the memoir Giving Up the Ghost, in which she describes her long struggle with a

debilitating form of endometriosis. Mantell's trilogy chronicles Thomas Cromwell's improbable rise

as the son of a blacksmith to become one of the most powerful men of his time in 16th century England.

But Cromwell, like many others around Henry VIII, fell into disfavor with the King

and was beheaded. Cromwell helped bring about the English Reformation. That's when the Church

of England broke away from the Catholic Church, allowing Henry VIII to annull his marriage to

Catherine of Eragon and Mary Ann Belinn. But if you remember your history, you'll recall that

things didn't go so well for Ann Belinn. In fact, her beheading ends Mantell's novel Bring Up the

Bodies. Terry spoke with Hillary Mantell in 2012 after Bring Up the Bodies had won the Booker Prize.

Hillary Mantell, welcome to Fresh Air and congratulations on your second man booker prize.

It's quite an accomplishment. So I'd love to start with a reading from the new book Bring Up the

Bodies. And this is toward the very end of the book when Ann Belinn is getting executed.

And there are many executions in your books. This is the first book ends with an execution and

so does the second. So before you read this passage, I'd like you to just explain what's

happening and who is speaking in this passage that you're going to read.

Well, we first of all have Thomas Cromwell, who is Henry's chief minister and the organizer of

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