Hilary Mantel: Return to Wolf Hall

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Being Hilary Mantel

Hilary Mantel

Shiloh Coke

Ian Denyer

Lydia Leonard

Susan Jones

Ben Miles

Nicolas Kent

Nathaniel Parker

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Factual: Life Stories

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BBC Two - Hilary Mantel: Return to Wolf Hall

One of the world’s greatest writers - Hilary Mantel - delves into her own history, intertwining the themes of the Wolf Hall trilogy with stories from her own life.

Made across six months in the run-up to publication of The Mirror and the Light, the final book in Hilary Mantel’s Booker-winning Tudor trilogy on the life of Thomas Cromwell, this film enjoys exclusive and extensive access to one of the world’s greatest writers, delving into Mantel's life as she describes a vivid imagination active from an early age and recounts with candour a tale of growing up with a dark family secret.

Who could have imagined that Mantel’s working-class anti-hero Thomas Cromwell would come to be so loved across the globe? Five hundred years after his death, the story of Cromwell’s extraordinary rise and sudden fall has been brought back into the light, drawing a vast readership, two Booker wins, a Bafta-winning television adaptation, a West End show and the interpretative gifts of some of the greatest actors.

Intertwining the themes of the Wolf Hall trilogy - power, faith, kingship and Englishness - with stories from her own life, the film also explores how the world of Thomas Cromwell reverberates in our world today. The film follows Mantel as she talks about how and why she embarked on the trilogy and how the writing of it changed her life. This is an artist’s biography in the characteristic style and voice of one of the most singular and brilliant minds of our age. Showing Hilary Mantel in her own world, both real and imaginative, led by the curiosity that drove her from the beginning, this film shows a writer at the peak of her powers.

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