Hilary Mantel is a British author best known for her historical Wolf Hall trilogy, which details the rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell, beginning during the reign of King Henry VIII of England. Mantel’s novels have been enormously popular on the British literary scene and have spurred a televised miniseries adaptation.

Mantel was born July 6th, 1952 in Hadfield, Derbyshire, England. On completing secondary school, she studied at the London School of Economics, ultimately transferring to the University of Sheffield. Mantel was employed as a social worker before marrying a geologist and moving with him to Botswana in the late 1970s. While living in Botswana, Mantel taught English in the small town where they’d settled. While she loved her life as a teacher, she felt culturally isolated and turned to writing to cope.

In 1983, the couple relocated to Jiddah, Saudi Arabia and in 1985 Mantel published her first book, Every Day is Mother’s Day, a dark comedy about an emotionally unstable mother and her autistic daughter. At the time, the book solidified her as a burgeoning new talent and she went on to do work for The Spectator and in the decades following wrote nine books on various subjects.

In 2009, Mantel struck gold with her novel Wolf Hall, which details Thomas Cromwell’s rise to prominence within the Tudor court. Wolf Hall has since expanded to a trilogy and the series is an international bestseller.

Mantel has won numerous prestigious literary awards, is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and has received a damehood from the Queen.