Guardian Books podcast: Hilary Mantel on Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies

Two-time Booker laureate Hilary Mantel describes what it was like to find herself writing from "behind Thomas Cromwell's eyes", why she decided to tell the story of Henry VIII's most notorious courtier in the present tense and how important it was to her to fight off the dead hand of determinism. She explains how she never intended to run a Priory Clinic for the Dead, and how she went about crafting a story in which history listens and talks to itself.

Reading list

Wolf Hall
Bring Up the Bodies