An observation only too easy to see when looking at the UK from the outside. With the rise of UKIP and the Tories appeasing potential UKIP voters with Daily Mail rhetoric, you do wonder what the final destination will be.
Hilary Mantel in an Interview with SPIEGEL on the Britain of Today - SPIEGEL ONLINE
Hilary Mantel in an Interview with SPIEGEL on the Britain of Today - SPIEGEL ONLINE
Hilary Mantel in an Interview with SPIEGEL on the Britain of Today - SPIEGEL ONLINE
Hilary Mantel's historical novels are celebrated in Britain, but her critiques of the establishment are widely feared. In a SPIEGEL interview, she says her country is retreating into insularity and to attitudes prevalent in Victorian times.
It isn't difficult to underestimate Hilary Mantel. In conversation, the prize-winning British author is quiet and almost shyly polite. But her novels, short stories and essays are full of trenchant and precise observations about society around her and she is famous for her barbs at the expense of the British establishment with a particular focus on political leaders, the media and royalty. Speaking of a reception with Queen Elizabeth II in Buckingham Palace several years ago, she once said that "I passed my eyes over her as a cannibal views his dinner."
Mantel's latest work, a collection of short stories called "The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher," was just recently published in German translation. In the title story, the narrator and an IRA sniper discuss and plan a (fictitious) assassination attempt on the then-British prime minister in the 1980s. Although Mantel, 62, is among the most respected authors in the country, her provocations have often brought her biting criticism.
She achieved fame with her novels "Wolf Hall" in 2009 and "Bring up the Bodies" in 2012, both of which are set in the court of King Henry VIII. The main character in the works is Thomas Cromwell, the son of a blacksmith who ultimately rose to become a key confidant to the king and an important figure in England's 16th century breakaway from the Catholic Church, though a later falling out resulted in his execution. As Mantel tells it, Cromwell was an eloquent strategist who had the king's ear, cunning but not disagreeable. His powerful adversary is Thomas More, who was later sainted by the Catholic Church. Mantel, however, portrays him as the cantankerous censor and Protestant persecutor that he likely was.
Mantel arrived for our interview through the back door of the Aldwych Theatre in London, accompanied by her husband, Gerald McEwen, who takes care of her business concerns. The theater is hosting the final performances of "Wolf Hall" and "Bring up the Bodies," which Mantel adapted for the stage together with the dramaturge Mike Poulton. Next spring, the two pieces will debut on Broadway in New York. The highly anticipated final book in the trilogy is likewise expected to appear next year.
The author makes herself comfortable in a windowless room off the main auditorium where the afternoon staging of "Wolf Hall" is just coming to an end. Muffled sounds of the actors playing Cromwell, More and King Henry can be heard, as can the frenetic applause at the end. Mantel heaves a sigh of relief.
SPIEGEL: Ms. Mantel, why do you hate Margaret Thatcher?
Mantel: Hate her? I'm not sure I do. Ms. Thatcher was like a walking argument. She was a vehicle for paradox and contradiction and like a three-act drama in herself. This makes me value her. As an author, when you have a character who is such a gift that you can put into fiction, your attitude to them becomes highly ambivalent.
SPIEGEL: The title of your short story, "The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher," doesn't sound very ambivalent.
Mantel: I'm really concerned in my short story to capture the feeling of the time, which was interesting, because she seemed to become separated as a person from her politics. In many ways, the issue seemed to be her personality and her persona. This provoked people and triggered violent extremes of feeling. As a writer of fiction, you want to know why. And this is the argument the characters have in my story.
SPIEGEL: Your story caused a minor uproar in Britain. The Daily Telegraph backed away from printing it. Lord Tim Bell called for the police to investigate. And a former Thatcher minister said the piece showed you were "sick and perverted". Were you hurt by these strong reactions?
Mantel: I was entertained. I was prepared, but bringing in the police for an investigation was beyond anything I could have planned or hoped for, because it immediately exposes them to ridicule. These people don't know how to read fiction, they were professionally outraged. I don't know if the reactions would have been the same if a male writer like Martin Amis or Ian McEwan had published this. I don't need a defense, but what I would ask them is: Do you think Ms. Thatcher shied away from controversy? Do you think she cared overly much about public opinion? Do you think she was afraid to be hated? It seems to me that, having set up this strong woman as their heroine, they are offended by this strongly held opinion of another woman.
SPIEGEL: Why did you write about Thatcher in the first place?
Mantel: Like the narrator in the story, I was living in Windsor in the 1980s with a bedroom that looked out to the gardens of the hospital (eds. note: where Thatcher had undergone an eye operation). And I saw her coming out of the hospital, walking slowly along the line of doctors and nurses who had lined up. She came along to thank them all. I had a very clear view of this.
SPIEGEL: The ideal moment for an assassination attempt?
Mantel: I immediately thought: This is a story. Thatcher was a carrier of myth, one of the myths was carrying Britannia in her armor. She carried these myths within her person, in the same way as Princess Diana did. Neither of them was conscious of it. Thatcher was the first woman in Downing Street, but imitated a man. When I say this, it seems like a joke, but I think Margaret Thatcher had a great deal of trouble understanding and coming to terms with her own femininity.
SPIEGEL: But her handbag was a very feminine accessory, wasn't it?
Mantel: She whirled it around like an outboard vagina.
SPIEGEL: Is it risky for an author of historical fiction to write about the present?
Mantel: Artistically, the challenges of historical fiction are far greater. And even the chances of being abused by the public are still surprisingly high. My books, particularly "Wolf Hall," upset a lot of people who thought that I was making up evil things about Thomas More. He's a saint and often presented as a hero, but of course I didn't make up anything about him that was crucial to the narrative. I didn't make up that he banned Luther's books, persecuted Protestants and that heretics were burned at the stake during his Chancellorship. I only dug out the soil beneath Thomas More's pedestal. Some people don't like their public image disturbed.
SPIEGEL: How do you find the characters you're writing about?
Mantel: I'm interested in people who come from nowhere and make their own luck and their own story. It wouldn't interest me to write about people who were born great and privileged, like Henry VIII. Thomas Cromwell starts off an outsider and infiltrates the heart of the establishment. You don't have to be an acute psychologist to guess what I'm doing here. I'm interested in people whose story I can relate to and who I know something about from the inside. That's how writers work. We find something in our own lives that draws us towards a character or certain circumstances where we say, I get it.
SPIEGEL: Cromwell gave you enough material for three books. What fascinates you so much about him?
Mantel: I picked the person who is actually at the center of everything (during the Tudor period), but who is usually presented as a dark shadow. The Cromwell books are a big shift for me, because this is me occupying the center ground of English history. When I was younger, I perceived myself as marginal to the whole literary enterprise and I didn't consider myself to have a straightforward claim on Englishness. My first book was about the French Revolution, then I wrote about Ireland and a book about the underworld of London freaks. Then, gradually, like someone working their way to the middle of a maze, I got myself to Tudor history.
SPIEGEL: In recent years, you've become an important part of the British cultural elite yourself. You can despise royalty from up close now.
Mantel: When I was given the Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth (in 2006), I went to the Buckingham Palace and there were hundreds of people. There were very, very young men who looked like they'd just hatched out of an egg, soldiers who were being given medals for real things. They had risked their lives. It was quite poignant. People like me felt we should just go.
SPIEGEL: In a lecture a few years later, you compared the royal family to pandas. Some in Britain have accused you of being ungrateful.
Mantel: But why? Everyone likes pandas! And people go to considerable expense to keep pandas in comfort so that they breed. It's not like I suggested the abolition of the royal family or the execution of the pandas. The truth is, of course, these honors have nothing to do with the queen or the royal family. The suggestions are made by arts organizations to committees of administrators. It's not done by the royals themselves. I don't suppose they care one way or the other.
Hilary Mantel's historical novels are celebrated in Britain, but her critiques of the establishment are widely feared. In a SPIEGEL interview, she says her country is retreating into insularity and to attitudes prevalent in Victorian times.
It isn't difficult to underestimate Hilary Mantel. In conversation, the prize-winning British author is quiet and almost shyly polite. But her novels, short stories and essays are full of trenchant and precise observations about society around her and she is famous for her barbs at the expense of the British establishment with a particular focus on political leaders, the media and royalty. Speaking of a reception with Queen Elizabeth II in Buckingham Palace several years ago, she once said that "I passed my eyes over her as a cannibal views his dinner."
Mantel's latest work, a collection of short stories called "The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher," was just recently published in German translation. In the title story, the narrator and an IRA sniper discuss and plan a (fictitious) assassination attempt on the then-British prime minister in the 1980s. Although Mantel, 62, is among the most respected authors in the country, her provocations have often brought her biting criticism.
She achieved fame with her novels "Wolf Hall" in 2009 and "Bring up the Bodies" in 2012, both of which are set in the court of King Henry VIII. The main character in the works is Thomas Cromwell, the son of a blacksmith who ultimately rose to become a key confidant to the king and an important figure in England's 16th century breakaway from the Catholic Church, though a later falling out resulted in his execution. As Mantel tells it, Cromwell was an eloquent strategist who had the king's ear, cunning but not disagreeable. His powerful adversary is Thomas More, who was later sainted by the Catholic Church. Mantel, however, portrays him as the cantankerous censor and Protestant persecutor that he likely was.
Mantel arrived for our interview through the back door of the Aldwych Theatre in London, accompanied by her husband, Gerald McEwen, who takes care of her business concerns. The theater is hosting the final performances of "Wolf Hall" and "Bring up the Bodies," which Mantel adapted for the stage together with the dramaturge Mike Poulton. Next spring, the two pieces will debut on Broadway in New York. The highly anticipated final book in the trilogy is likewise expected to appear next year.
The author makes herself comfortable in a windowless room off the main auditorium where the afternoon staging of "Wolf Hall" is just coming to an end. Muffled sounds of the actors playing Cromwell, More and King Henry can be heard, as can the frenetic applause at the end. Mantel heaves a sigh of relief.
SPIEGEL: Ms. Mantel, why do you hate Margaret Thatcher?
Mantel: Hate her? I'm not sure I do. Ms. Thatcher was like a walking argument. She was a vehicle for paradox and contradiction and like a three-act drama in herself. This makes me value her. As an author, when you have a character who is such a gift that you can put into fiction, your attitude to them becomes highly ambivalent.
SPIEGEL: The title of your short story, "The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher," doesn't sound very ambivalent.
Mantel: I'm really concerned in my short story to capture the feeling of the time, which was interesting, because she seemed to become separated as a person from her politics. In many ways, the issue seemed to be her personality and her persona. This provoked people and triggered violent extremes of feeling. As a writer of fiction, you want to know why. And this is the argument the characters have in my story.
SPIEGEL: Your story caused a minor uproar in Britain. The Daily Telegraph backed away from printing it. Lord Tim Bell called for the police to investigate. And a former Thatcher minister said the piece showed you were "sick and perverted". Were you hurt by these strong reactions?
Mantel: I was entertained. I was prepared, but bringing in the police for an investigation was beyond anything I could have planned or hoped for, because it immediately exposes them to ridicule. These people don't know how to read fiction, they were professionally outraged. I don't know if the reactions would have been the same if a male writer like Martin Amis or Ian McEwan had published this. I don't need a defense, but what I would ask them is: Do you think Ms. Thatcher shied away from controversy? Do you think she cared overly much about public opinion? Do you think she was afraid to be hated? It seems to me that, having set up this strong woman as their heroine, they are offended by this strongly held opinion of another woman.
SPIEGEL: Why did you write about Thatcher in the first place?
Mantel: Like the narrator in the story, I was living in Windsor in the 1980s with a bedroom that looked out to the gardens of the hospital (eds. note: where Thatcher had undergone an eye operation). And I saw her coming out of the hospital, walking slowly along the line of doctors and nurses who had lined up. She came along to thank them all. I had a very clear view of this.
SPIEGEL: The ideal moment for an assassination attempt?
Mantel: I immediately thought: This is a story. Thatcher was a carrier of myth, one of the myths was carrying Britannia in her armor. She carried these myths within her person, in the same way as Princess Diana did. Neither of them was conscious of it. Thatcher was the first woman in Downing Street, but imitated a man. When I say this, it seems like a joke, but I think Margaret Thatcher had a great deal of trouble understanding and coming to terms with her own femininity.
SPIEGEL: But her handbag was a very feminine accessory, wasn't it?
Mantel: She whirled it around like an outboard vagina.
SPIEGEL: Is it risky for an author of historical fiction to write about the present?
Mantel: Artistically, the challenges of historical fiction are far greater. And even the chances of being abused by the public are still surprisingly high. My books, particularly "Wolf Hall," upset a lot of people who thought that I was making up evil things about Thomas More. He's a saint and often presented as a hero, but of course I didn't make up anything about him that was crucial to the narrative. I didn't make up that he banned Luther's books, persecuted Protestants and that heretics were burned at the stake during his Chancellorship. I only dug out the soil beneath Thomas More's pedestal. Some people don't like their public image disturbed.
SPIEGEL: How do you find the characters you're writing about?
Mantel: I'm interested in people who come from nowhere and make their own luck and their own story. It wouldn't interest me to write about people who were born great and privileged, like Henry VIII. Thomas Cromwell starts off an outsider and infiltrates the heart of the establishment. You don't have to be an acute psychologist to guess what I'm doing here. I'm interested in people whose story I can relate to and who I know something about from the inside. That's how writers work. We find something in our own lives that draws us towards a character or certain circumstances where we say, I get it.
SPIEGEL: Cromwell gave you enough material for three books. What fascinates you so much about him?
Mantel: I picked the person who is actually at the center of everything (during the Tudor period), but who is usually presented as a dark shadow. The Cromwell books are a big shift for me, because this is me occupying the center ground of English history. When I was younger, I perceived myself as marginal to the whole literary enterprise and I didn't consider myself to have a straightforward claim on Englishness. My first book was about the French Revolution, then I wrote about Ireland and a book about the underworld of London freaks. Then, gradually, like someone working their way to the middle of a maze, I got myself to Tudor history.
SPIEGEL: In recent years, you've become an important part of the British cultural elite yourself. You can despise royalty from up close now.
Mantel: When I was given the Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth (in 2006), I went to the Buckingham Palace and there were hundreds of people. There were very, very young men who looked like they'd just hatched out of an egg, soldiers who were being given medals for real things. They had risked their lives. It was quite poignant. People like me felt we should just go.
SPIEGEL: In a lecture a few years later, you compared the royal family to pandas. Some in Britain have accused you of being ungrateful.
Mantel: But why? Everyone likes pandas! And people go to considerable expense to keep pandas in comfort so that they breed. It's not like I suggested the abolition of the royal family or the execution of the pandas. The truth is, of course, these honors have nothing to do with the queen or the royal family. The suggestions are made by arts organizations to committees of administrators. It's not done by the royals themselves. I don't suppose they care one way or the other.
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