Much historical fiction that centers on real people has always been deficient in information, lacking in craft and empty in affect.

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• Hilary Mantel:

  Like a historian, I interpret, select, discard, shape, simplify. Unlike a historian, I make up peop

• Hilary Mantel:

  Hindsight is the historian's necessary vice.

• Hilary Mantel:

  Memory isn't a theme; it's part of the human condition.

• Hilary Mantel:

  My thoughts have been the thing I can rely on.

• Hilary Mantel:

  I think if I hadn't become a writer I would just have suppressed that part of my personality. I thi

• Hilary Mantel:

  Sometimes people ask, 'Does writing make you happy?' But I think that's beside the point. It makes

• Hilary Mantel:

  I'm a very organised and rational and linear thinker, and you have to stop all that to write a nove

• Hilary Mantel:

  Imagination only comes when you privilege the subconscious, when you make delay and procrastination

• Hilary Mantel:

  What fascinates me are the turning points where history could have been different.

• Hilary Mantel:

  When I was a child, there was very little money, so I've always been concerned for my financial sec