Mantel pieces: royal bodies and other writing from the London Review of Books. Hilary Mantel. 2020.

In 1987, when Hilary Mantel was first published in the London Review of Books, she wrote to the editor, Karl Miller. ‘I have no critical training whatsoever, so I am forced to be more brisk and breezy than scholarly.’ This collection of twenty reviews, essays ad pieces of memoir from the next three decades tells the story of what followed.

Her subjects range far and wide: Robespierre and Danton, The Hite Report, Saudi Arabia where she lived for four years in the 1980s, the Bulger case, John Osborne, the Virgin Mary as well as the pop icon Madonna, and a brilliant examination of Helen Duncan, Britain’s last witch. Her famous lecture, Royal Bodies, which caused a media frenzy, explores the place of royal women in society and our imagination. Here too are some of her LRB diaries, including her first meeting with her stepfather and a confrontation with a circus strongman.