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The agony of reading Hilary Mantel

It’s hard being a historical novelist in the age of Hilary Mantel

21 March 2020

9:00 AM

21 March 2020

9:00 AM

It is dispiriting being an also-ran. Setting yourself up as a writer takes hubris. It is a wild and outrageous claim that you have something to say, in a voice worth being amplified. Then along comes Hilary Mantel, and you realise with deadening clarity — you have little to say, badly.

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spectator.co.uk/podcast - Antonia Senior and Mark Lawson on what makes Hilary Mantel so good.

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