Remembering Dame Hilary Mantel

And a return to Bath

Dear Reader,

In 2018, my debut novel Testament was published and I toured literary festivals and bookshops. I was working on A Wild & True Relation at the time and I had just been awarded the Society of Authors’ Authors Foundation Grant, which provided me with funding for research and development. I was appearing at Budleigh Salterton Literary Festival, and decided to use some of the funding to buy myself a ticket to a day-long masterclass delivered by Dame Hilary Mantel, my favourite writer and a fundamental inspiration when I began writing A Wild & True Relation back in 2009.

I was so excited simply to be in the same room with Hilary Mantel. I made note of everything she said without once looking down at the page – I didn’t want to miss a second of it. As a result, the margin in my notebook is a weathered cliff. I had so many questions I wanted to ask, but I was nervous and didn’t want to ramble. I honed it down to one question and in the break wrote out versions of it until I had something intelligible about how to write the body in historical fiction. When I finally piped up, Hilary told me that question went to the heart of historical fiction and I remember blood suddenly thrumming in my ears, but I still heard (and wrote down) the answer. Everything she said that day was wise, generous, insightful, wickedly funny. She spoke until it seemed to hurt, but kept speaking. The masterclass was her way of supporting the festival she loved, both as a citizen of Budleigh and the festival President.

(Our books at the Festival shop – I was SO thrilled to share a bookcase)

Afterwards, I joined the signing queue, clutching Bring up the Bodies to my chest. I also had Testament in my bag and was desperate to put it into her hands but terribly nervous about imposing. But when I got to the front of the signing queue, Hilary told me I’d been luminous all day. This knocked me out, as I hadn’t really done much all day, but also knocked me forward. I got up my courage to get my book out of my bag. Hilary accepted Testament so warmly, and then asked how she could get in touch with me. I swallowed my instinctive response – “Why would you want to?” – and gave her my email address. She’d already been so kind, I didn’t expect anything else. But I would come to realise that was one of Hilary’s graces and powers – she didn’t need to be kind, but always was.

A few weeks later I was checking my email and there was Hilary Mantel’s name in my inbox – I immediately squeezed my eyes shut in case it wasn’t true. After that, we exchanged what Hilary called letters regularly. When I finally finished A Wild & True Relation at Greenway, Agatha Christie’s house in Devon where I was writer-in-residence, I wrote to Hilary from the vinery to say thank you for everything she’d meant to the book’s life. She replied and told me she’d finished The Mirror & The Light. We talked about final moments, both writing them and being in them. I was – and forever will be – eternally grateful to have been given a window into her creative process, and to have her light shine onto mine.

Hilary always took the time. Whenever I wrote to her for advice, she’d answer with deep reflection and honesty about her own experiences. If she saw me in the newspaper, she’d write to tell me. She was one of the first people to congratulate me on any good news, no matter how busy she was. She signed her letters with love, and I would do the same, though with a sense of disbelief – it’s not a common thing in life to be able to tell our heroes we love them. For she was my hero, both for what she could do with language and the career she’d forged while living with pain. I have a disability that often renders me immobile, and to see how she looked pain dead in the eye filled me with courage.

When A Wild & True Relation was finally ready for early proofs, I was scared of sharing it with Hilary, but also excited to be able to do so. I didn’t expect her to read it because she was so busy, but just to give it to her was a privilege. But then she did read it and sent through the most beautiful words for the cover. These words take on a new meaning for me now, and just thinking about her generosity makes my breath catch. She didn’t have to be so kind. She always was. She was my hero and then she became my friend. But she was still my hero and will be forever.

The world has lost the light of her clarity; her sentences that could throw a hook into depths unknown and bring back up parts of ourselves we didn’t know we were missing; her endless heart. When Charles Dickens died, his grave lay open in the Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey. The public came in their thousands and left behind so many flowers the grave overflowed with bloom. Writing about the influence of women writers on future generations, Virginia Woolf argued: ‘masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice. Jane Austen should have laid a wreath upon the grave of Fanny Burney, and George Eliot done homage to the robust shade of Eliza Carter... For we think back through our mothers if we are women.’ I wish we still honoured writers in the Poets’ Corner so that I could take flowers and pay homage to Hilary’s robust shade. I visited the grave of the Hungarian author Géza Gárdonyi with my grandmother when I was a teenager, and the inscription on the cross comes back to me now: ‘CSAK A TESTE.’ It means only his body. The work remains. That’s our great luck. We have lost Hilary. But the work remains.

Meanwhile, the book tour continues. I lived in Bath with my partner for five years, and last week we made a triumphant return with our friend Kate, who we met in the Georgian city and is currently visiting from California. Nick and I moved from Bath to Edinburgh in lockdown. We thought returning might be bittersweet, but it proved lovely to visit our favourite places, now open again. ‘You disappeared!’ said the owner of our local café. I was so happy to appear at Mr B’s, our most beloved bookshop, to talk about Double or Nothing with brilliant bookseller and Bond fan Lottie. We used to visit Mr B’s so regularly, it felt like doing an event in my living room. And I got to sign another luggage tag for the pen ceiling, something I first did on the publication day of Testament. It was exciting to give the proof of A Wild & True Relation to booksellers at Mr B’s, Waterstones and Toppings. The novel comes out on February 2nd 2023. With each bookseller and blogger and author I hand the novel, I let go of another inch on the kite string. Soon it will fly.

(Turns out this is the pained expression I pull if someone asks me to choose between the Bond books and films.)

(At beautiful Toppings, book-signing and proof-dropping.)

(And lovely Waterstones.)

Finally, Nick and I visited our old front door. Utter joy, when I expected bittersweet nostalgia. The B in 1B – which constantly fell off – has been nailed back in place and the junk shop next door has become a fancy Italian design studio! So it goes.

From Kim, With Love x