SOURCE: “Two Doors: Which One Will You Open?” in Observer, March 13, 1994, p. 20.

In the following essay, Kellaway provides an overview of Mantel's life and work.

Hilary Mantel lives in Sunningdale, Berkshire, in a stocky, dependable red brick house. Above her front door is a white plaster medallion of the Virgin and Child. The place used to be a nursing home for mothers and babies, then a dating agency. Now she and her husband live in it with their cats, Tertius and Bella. Past and present pets—pale lemony dogs, a masterful Burmese—stare out from oval silver frames. Hilary Mantel's face looks feline too, with unrealistically large, blue-saucer-eyes. She is one of those writers about whom one feels, meeting her at home: so this is where you hide, this is how you keep your unsuburban imagination safe.

Not that she has always lived here. She has never quite...