Mantel is not just a double Man Booker Prize-winning novelist (she won in 2009 and 2012 for Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies, the first two instalments of her fictional trilogy set in Tudor England). She is also a provocative analyst of contemporary mores. In 2013, her essay on the packaging and presentation of the Duchess of Cambridge (“a jointed doll on which certain rags are hung”) sent the mid-market press in Britain into paroxysms of outrage.

Further reading:Hilary Mantel's profile at Harper CollinsHilary Mantel: Margaret Thatcher "Wrecked This Country"Mantel discusses Britain’s male-dominated literary culture and the legacy of a certain prime minister with Isaac Chotiner.Confessions Mantel confesses her darkest literary, and real world, transgressions.Short story: Offences Against the PersonA short story from Mantel's collection 'The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher'.