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Live webstream: Hilary Mantel talks about her prize-winning fiction

The thoughts of the double Man Booker-winning novelist will be streamed live on 15 December

The thoughts of double Man Booker-winning novelist Hilary Mantel (pictured, right) will be streamed live on Monday 15 December from 7pm. To watch the Man Booker at Birkbeck event, please visit: Livestream .

Mantel will discuss her acclaimed novel Bring Up The Bodies at the fully-booked event for Birkbeck students and alumni. Due to popular demand, her conversation with Russell Celyn Jones, Professor of Creative Writing at Birkbeck, will be streamed to enable an online audience to watch the discussion.

Mantel is the first British writer, and the first woman, to win the Man Booker Prize more than once, the first time for her 2009 novel Wolf Hall, a fictional account of Thomas Cromwell’s rise to power in the court of Henry VIII, and the second in 2012 for its sequel, Bring Up The Bodies.

Bring Up The Bodies, is a compelling fictional exploration of one of the most shocking episodes in English history: the destruction of Anne Boleyn. By 1535 Thomas Cromwell, the blacksmith’s son, is far from his humble origins. Chief Minister to Henry VIII, his fortunes have risen with those of Anne Boleyn, Henry’s second wife, for whose sake the king has broken with Rome and created his own church. But Henry’s actions have forced England into dangerous isolation, and Anne has failed to bear him a son to secure the Tudor line. When Henry visits Wolf Hall, Cromwell watches as the king falls in love with Jane Seymour. The minister sees what is at stake: not just the king’s pleasure, but the safety of the nation. As he eases a way through the sexual politics of the court, he must negotiate an outcome that will satisfy Henry and secure his own career. But neither minister nor the king will emerge undamaged from the bloody theatre of Anne’s final days.

Bring Up The Bodies offers an audacious vision of Tudor England that, freshly realised, sheds its light on the modern world.

Each year Birkbeck welcomes a highly acclaimed author as part of the Booker Prize Foundation's Universities Initiative. The Universities Initiative aims to bring high-quality contemporary literature to students from across the disciplines. Last year author Alan Hollinghurst spoke about his novel The Line of Beauty, winner of the 2004 Man Booker Prize.

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