ABSTRACT
In the summer of 2017, Hilary Mantel delivered the BBC’s prestigious Reith Lectures. Over five lectures, Mantel provided her audiences with wide-ranging discussions around her own preoccupations and concerns: the presence of the past within the present, the value of historical fiction, especially in the excavation of women’s lives, and discussed the potential dangers of the artist’s immersion in her subject. Sketch shows may have subsequently mocked her light, high-pitched speaking voice but the lectures were full of her characteristic mix of lightness and gravity, with comic twists buried in discussions of dark subjects. Such contrasts are part of her writerly persona: Hilary Mantel is a Dame of the British Empire who writes short stories imagining the assassination of the Prime Minister, and a historical novelist fond of pointing out the limitations of our historical knowledge.
