fireIllary Mantell is known for his outspoken views on politics and the royal family. She is, of course, also known for her trilogy of Woolf Her Hall, which vividly recreates the life of Henry VIII and his wives, and Thomas the Consigliere Her Cromwell. So it’s surprising that when we met just days before the Queen’s death, she was reluctant to be brought up on the subject of the current monarchy or a new prime minister.
“I’m against resemblances. People are always trying to force me to make resemblances,” she says adamantly.
It’s Mantell’s ear for the interplay of past and present that makes her trilogy a landmark of early 21st-century fiction, but it’s no wonder she’s wary.
She made headlines a year ago when she suggested that the monarchy may be facing an “endgame” and may not “outlast William.” And in a lecture she gave in 2013 titled Royal Bodies, she described the then-Duchess of Cambridge as a “plastic princess”, sparking outcry. deliberately misinterpreting the criticism of , saying, “We abuse the royal family and make them superhuman yet subhuman”.
Today, Mantell says, we are in danger of attracting shallow ties to modern politics and society.
“I, like many writers, are concerned about the speed at which we consume history now, the way the past, the most recent past, has been versioned and has real people walking around. Without naming her, she nods, referring to her impending appearance as Boris Johnson in the TV series The Crown and Kenneth Branagh’s This England.
We are here to discuss The Wolf Hall Picture Book, a collaboration between actor Ben Miles, who played Thomas Cromwell in the stage adaptation of the Wolf Hall trilogy, and his brother, photographer George Miles. I’m meeting
The book’s origins, the three say, lie in a walk Ben and George took shortly after Ben was cast as Cromwell in the summer of 2013. Revisit a place at the heart of the brothers’ family history. The year before, his mother had died, and he set out from his grandmother’s flat in Surbiton, South West London, not far from Cromwell’s childhood home, and reached the Tower of London on foot and by boat. Day.
The result is a collection of ambiguous and disturbing images where the present snuggles with the past, accompanied by excerpts from the novel, including excerpts from deleted scenes.
Above all, it is a question of how we interact with history. its elusive nature; and its unexpected resonance with our modern life.
Ms Mantell is preparing to leave Devon this month to live in Ireland with her husband, Gerald McEwen. It is
Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies are the only consecutive novels by a Booker Prize-winning author, and Mantell was closely involved in transitioning to the stage in Stratford, London and New York. , which was also adopted by BBC Television. She also published her short story collection Margaret Her Assassination of Thatcher in 2014.
But among Mantell’s many notable qualities is a constant desire to rejuvenate.
After collecting a significant amount of photographs, George Miles sent her a dummy book. “I remember saying, ‘We’ve got to do something about these things,'” says Mantell. “But at the time, I had no idea it would be such a marching odyssey as the book.”
At that stage, The Mirror and the Light, the third in her trilogy, was still several years away from completion. And for me, it was exactly the refreshment I needed.
George Miles remembers a huge email from Mantell. “It was amazing, because that was why I represented photography so clearly and in such a different way.”
For Ben Miles, who co-wrote Mirror and Light, which Mantell staged last year at London’s Gielgud Theatre, the project was part of an ongoing collaboration spanning nearly a decade. The three got to visit places together, one of which she would often act as a decoy for the kindly guides who tried to show them the official versions.
George Miles describes a photograph of Ben sneaking up to take pictures of Anne Boleyn’s room and his brother showing the mantelpiece holding a broadsword during a swordfighting demonstration at Hampton Court. “When I arrived at a place with my camera, I often felt like I was following a route around the place that was clearly not the route prescribed by the manager of that place. And it was often kind of a long and winding digression.You didn’t really know what you were looking for.”
Some very impressive and thought-provoking images followed. Ghostly Hounds of Richmond Park. Boleyn’s robes laid out on the table like the shrouds of Lambeth Palace. The curling tongs wedged into the floor during filming at Cromwell’s mansion in Austin Friars’ City of London searched the world like an instrument of torture. It works.
But the book is not Mantell’s attempt to draw parallels with modern life. For example, when people suggested to her that Dominic Cummings, a former adviser to Boris Johnson, resembled Cromwell, she was persistently baffled.
“I think it’s simply because I value the long-term view so much. That’s why I don’t create parallels. That way a real person turns into this kind of fantasy persona.” I think, but unfortunately they’re not. They’re real, they’re real, they’re dangerous.”
