Hilary Mantel is best known for her historical fiction, most notably her mega-selling Cromwell trilogy, which began with Wolf Hall, published in 2009. Yet from the late 1980s, she was also working as a journalist and reviewer, covering cinema as the Spectator’s film critic and writing essays for the London Review of Books. That work and more is gathered in the posthumously published A Memoir of My Former Self, a wide-ranging collection that might best be described as Mantel’s B-sides. Subject matter includes Biggles, stationery, Jane Austen, endometriosis, RoboCop, Madonna, Annie Proulx, VS Naipaul, When Harry Met Sally and the time Mantel stole a book from her convent school library – “I was prepared at any time to give it back to a pupil who could show she needed it more than me.”
Lydia Leonard, who played Anne Boleyn in the stage version of Wolf Hall, reads the early chapters, which include an essay on Mantel’s years as an expat living in Saudi Arabia, and a lyrical piece from 2017 on the legacy of Diana, Princess of Wales. When Diana died, Mantel observes, “a crack appeared in a vial of grief, and released a salt ocean. A nation took to the boats … As Diana was a collective creation, she was also a collective possession.”
A cast of writers and actors narrate the later chapters, among them Anne Enright, Aurora Dawson-Hunte, Sarah Waters, Jane Wymark and Ben Miles. This may not be a straightforward memoir, but each of the essays reveals something of their author’s personality, her preoccupations and her endlessly vibrant mind.
• Available via Audible, 15hr 22min
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