Friday, 23 September 2022 14:06

By Emma Downes @emma_downes2021

Hilary Mantel. Credit: George Miles/Harper Collins.

Glossop-born author Dame Hilary Mantel has died suddenly at the age of 70, her publisher has announced.

The best-selling author, twice a Booker Prize winner, was most famous for her historical fiction.

Her publisher Harpur Collins said in a statement: “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.”

Her critically acclaimed work included Wolf Hall about Henry VIII’s minister Thomas Cromwell published in 2009 and its sequel Bring Up the Bodies.

They were adapted for the stage by the Royal Shakespeare Company and adapted for the small screen as a BBC mini-series.

The third book and final book in the trilogy The Mirror and the Light was published in 2020.

Dame Hilary was born at the Partington Maternity Hospital in Glossop in July 1952 and spent her early years in Hadfield, raised on Brosscroft and Bankbottom. She attended St Charles Roman Catholic Primary School before moving to Romiley at the age of 11.

St Charles Catholic School, where Hilary attended. Image supplied by Glossop Heritage Trust.

When Hilary made headlines in the Glossop Chronicle in 2009 after being named Man Booker Prize winner for her novel Wolf Hall. Image supplied by Glossop Heritage Trust.

Jack Mantel featured in the Glossop Chronicle in 1952 (top centre picture). He was the step father of Hilary Mantel and the reason she changed her surname to Mantel (She was born Hilary Thompson). Image supplied by Glossop Heritage Trust.