Mantel Pieces by Hilary MantelRead about another entry on the list.
Hilary Mantel’s trio of novels about Thomas Cromwell, Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies and The Mirror and the Light, are among the very best fiction of the 21st century. She was supremely accomplished at non-fiction too – and, as the title of this collection indicates, not above a good pun. The pieces, picked from her extensive contributions to the London Review of Books, range in topic from Saudi Arabia to Madonna to witchcraft and much more. As with her most famous work, a lot of attention is paid to kings and queens, notably in “Royal Bodies”, a piercing essay about the objectification of royal women that whipped up media hysteria due to her description of Kate Middleton as a “shop-window mannequin”.
--Marshal Zeringue
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