'The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher': Hilary Mantel draws controversy for new short story - CSMonitor.com 'The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher': Hilary Mantel draws controversy for new short story Latest News 'The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher' is by Hilary Mantel. View Caption View Caption of Less than six months after the death of former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, award-winning English writer Hilary Mantel has provoked an uproar by writing a controversial short story in which she imagines Thatcher’s assassination. In “ The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher: August 6th 1983 ,” published online by the UK’s Guardian Friday, Mantel imagines an IRA hit man and an ordinary woman conspiring to kill the prime minister from a window overlooking a street Thatcher frequents. “It's a horror story for Thatcher's fans, a wish-fulfillment fantasy for her detractors,” writes the Guardian . “Either way, it's shocking.” Photos of the Day Photos of the weekend Mantel dreamed up the macabre tale after spying Thatcher from her own bedroom window more than 30 years ago.

Around noon on Saturday August 6, 1983, Mantel remembers seeing the former prime minister from her bedroom window overlooking a quiet street and private hospital where Thatcher was having eye surgery. Mantel said she saw the late leader of the UK just “toddling” around the hospital gardens unguarded when she was struck with the thought. "Immediately your eye measures the distance," Mantel told the Guardian , her finger and thumb forming a gun. "I thought, if I wasn't me, if I was someone else, she'd be dead." With that, the author freely admits her abhorrence for the late prime minister. "When I think of her, I can still feel that boiling detestation. She did long-standing damage in many areas of national life.” Not surprisingly, the story has stirred passions in the UK, where Thatcher is as intensely loved by some as she is detested by others. The Daily Telegraph, which reportedly paid a substantial sum to secure exclusive rights to the piece, has now refused to publish it. “If somebody admits they want to assassinate somebody, surely the police should investigate,” Lord Timothy Bell, a friend and former PR adviser to Thatcher, told the Sunday Times.

“This is in unquestionably bad taste.” Mail columnist Stephen Glover described the story as “dangerous nonsense.” “What I object to is not Hilary Mantel’s detestation of Thatcher, warped though I believe it to be. It is the suggestion that she could, and should, have been bumped off as though she were some deranged South American dictator… “Mantel’s contribution is peculiarly damaging because, while she appears so mild-mannered, her message is interpretable as a deadly one. If you don’t like your democratically elected leaders, who operate within the rule of law, you can always think about assassinating them.” Critics have also lashed out at Mantel for publishing the story less than six months after the late leader’s death. Conservative MP Nadine Dorries told the Daily Mail, “It is shocking as it is so close [to Margaret Thatcher’s death] and she still has living family and children. It is about a character whose demise is so recent,” she said. Mantel has responded to the criticism, including the timing of the piece. "I am concerned with respect. I'm not concerned with taste,” she said.

“I would have happily concluded the story in her lifetime but couldn't – it was my technical difficulty, not any delicacy. I believe in walking that line. You mustn't be too timid to risk getting it wrong." She told the Guardian that her story was an examination of why Thatcher “aroused such visceral passion in so many people.” “Whatever your view of her, she was a shaper of history,” she said, later adding, “I think it would be unconscionable to say, this is too dark, we can’t examine it. We can’t be running away from history. We have to face it head on, because the repercussions of Mrs. Thatcher’s reign have fed the nation. It is still resonating.” “She is a marvelous person to put into fiction because of the contradictions that run straight through her personality. You always feel she was a walking argument.” Of course, this isn’t the first time the award-winning author has courted controversy.

Last year she infuriated Britons for describing the Duchess of Cambridge as a "plastic princess born to breed" in a lecture on " Royal Bodies .” Mantel is best known for her two Booker Prize winning novels, “ Wolf Hall " and “ Bring Up the Bodies ,” a fictional account of Thomas Cromwell’s rise to power in the court of Henry VIII. The BBC is adapting the popular trilogy (a third book is set for release in 2015) for television, set to air next year. Her esteemed status is the reason many in the UK are outraged by her outrageous short story. Perhaps most interesting, the argument has had some debating about the purpose of fiction and its bounds. Writing for the Guardian , Damian Barr argues, “Good taste is for people who write about fish forks and napkin rings – it is not the purview of novelists. We want, and need our fiction, to shock us out of the everyday. Stories that stem from reality, a glimpse of a woman from a window, are the most unsettling of all,” he writes. “The crime is that Lord Bell, and the great enraged, don’t get that. Thought is not, as yet, a crime.” Husna Haq is a Monitor correspondent.

Next up Get the Monitor stories you care about delivered to your inbox. Daily Hilary Mantel 'should be investigated by police' over Margaret Thatcher assassination story, says Lord Bell | The Independent News Hilary Mantel 'should be investigated by police' over Margaret Thatcher assassination story, says Lord Bell Lord Timothy Bell says “police should investigate” Hilary Mantel after she admits to wanting to kill the former PM Sunday 21 September 2014 12:03 BST Click to follow The Independent Online Hilary Mantel has been called "sick and deranged" for her Margaret Thatcher assassination fantasy Lords and MPs have condemned prize-winning author Hilary Mantel, saying her fantasy of assassinating Margaret Thatcher - written as a short story - is “sick and deranged” and that the author should be investigated by police. In an interview with the Guardian, where the story was published on Friday, Mantel recalled a moment in 1983 in which she saw the now-deceased former Prime Minister, and explained she thought about what it would be like to kill her. “I thought, if I wasn’t me, if I was someone else, she’d be dead,” Mantel said in an interview.

Lord Timothy Bell, a friend and former PR adviser to Thatcher that Mantel should be investigated by police following her remarks. “Mantel needs to see a therapist,” he told the Sunday Times. “If somebody admits they want to assassinate somebody, surely the police should investigate. This is in unquestionably bad taste,” he said. Margaret Thatcher - a life in politics Margaret Thatcher - a life in politics He wasn’t the only public figure enraged by Mantel’s self-described “boiling detestation.” Stewart Jackson, Conservative MP for Peterborough, took to Twitter to slam Mantel as “sick and deranged” and full of “bile and hate.” Oh dear weirdo @hilarymantel has put her foot in it again with her sick & deranged Thatcher death story. Sad to be puffed up with bile &hate — Stewart Jackson MP (@SJacksonMP) September 21, 2014 Nadine Dorries, Conservative MP for mid-Bedfordshire, also hit out at Mantel's controversial piece of fiction.

She tweeted: "Having loved every word Mantel has ever written, I'm truly stunned, not bcse subject off limits, but for MTs family." Having loved every word Mantel has ever written, I'm truly stunned, not bcse subject off limits, but for MTs family — Nadine Dorries MP (@NadineDorriesMP) September 20, 2014 Conservative activist and Times columnist Tim Montgomerie said Mantel's words were "so full of hate" and that he was "really disappointed" that the Guardian chose to promote the story. Further to previous tweet, Mantel's words about Mrs Thatcher so full of hate.

Really disappointed Guardian chose to promote it in way it did — Tim Montgomerie (@TimMontgomerie) September 20, 2014 When pressed, he said his issue with the story was one of "taste." But Mantel, who twice won the man-Booker prize and whose novel Wolf Hall is set to be adapted as a BBC2 series, told The Guardian: “I am concerned with respect, I’m not concerned with taste.” She responded to claims that the story, on which she had worked for 30 years, was cashing in on Thatcher’s death last year: “I would have happily concluded the story in her lifetime but couldn’t – it was my technical difficulty, not any delicacy.” She added: “I believe in walking that line. You mustn’t be too timid to risk getting it wrong.” Read more Mantel's Tudor tales inspire stage and TV adaptations The story, in which a wealthy woman invited into her home a man revealed to be a Thatcher-hating assassin, was set to be serialised by The Telegraph, only for the conservative newspaper to scrap it for being overly offensive.

Telegraph Media Group said: “Stories and features get spiked all the time; it is called editing. When the editors read the full story, it was decided that it was not something that Telegraph readers would appreciate.” Mantel was also last year centre of a controversy, when she described the Duchess of Cambridge as a bland, “machine made” Princess in a London Review of Books lecture. Tories criticise BBC for serialising Hilary Mantel's story The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher on Radio 4 By Claire Webb Monday 15 December 2014 at 12:26PM Former Tory politicians Lord Tebbit and Lord Bell have taken the BBC to task for serialising double Booker-winner Hilary Mantel's story, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, on Radio 4. Former cabinet minister Lord Tebbitt told the Mail on Sunday : “It’s a sick book from a sick mind and it’s being promoted by a sick broadcasting corporation." Lord Bell, who was a former advisor to Thatcher, added: "The BBC is inevitably going to be accused of political bias." Tory backbencher Nadine Dorries has also objected, protesting that Thatcher's family is still grieving.

"I think [the BBC has] made the wrong decision," she told the Daily Telegraph . "They should have been a little bit more sensitive." The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher is the title chapter of the author's recent short story collection, and imagines the former prime minister's murder. It is one of several stories that will be read by Dame Harriet Walter for Radio 4's Book at Bedtime. Mantel has retaliated, claiming she is merely a pawn in the Sunday paper's ongoing assault on the Corporation. “I recognise that this latest nonsense from the Mail [on Sunday] is not about me or my work; it’s a skirmish in a war with the BBC,” she told the Guardian . “My title story has the form of a debate. It demonstrates how very easily history could have worked out in a different way. There is no need for me or any writer to justify or explain herself to people who have no interest in fiction except when it feeds their dim sense of being injured in some way. The story speaks for itself, and I stand behind it.” She dismissed Tebbit and Bell as "the same tetchy commentators who made fools of themselves when my stories were first published.

You think they'd learn." A BBC spokesperson said: “Book at Bedtime offers the best of modern and classic literature and, in doing so, presents a wide range of perspectives from around the world. The work of Hilary Mantel – a double Booker prize-winning author – is of significant interest to the public and we will not shy away from the controversial subject matter that features in one of the four stories read across the week.” Last year Charles Moore's authorised biography of Lady Thatcher was serialised in Radio 4's Book of the Week slot. The BBC has also adapted Mantel's Booker-winning novel Wolf Hall into a six-part drama starring Damien Lewis as Henry VIII and Mark Rylance as the Tudor king's closest advisor Thomas Cromwell. It will be shown on BBC2 in the new year. Hilary Mantel Interview: Margaret Thatcher "Wrecked This Country" | New Republic By Isaac Chotiner October 5, 2014 The British writer Hilary Mantel may be best known for intricate historical reconstructions of life in Tudor England, but that doesn’t mean she is afraid of a modern-day tabloid brawl.

The title story of her latest collection, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, describes the fictional assassination of the former prime minister in 1983 at the hands of an IRA gunman. Naturally, it has been interpreted by British conservatives as authorial wish fulfillment. Lord Timothy Bell, a former Thatcher adviser, called on the police to investigate Mantel, and a Tory member of Parliament described her as “sick and deranged.” The Daily Telegraph refused to even publish the story after having paid the author a hefty advance for it. This is not the first time Mantel, who is 62, has found herself the target of national condemnation. Last year, in a lecture, she referred to Kate Middleton as a “shop-window mannequin.” The talk was actually a subtle attack on the cult of monarchy and the fetishization of the female body (and rather sympathetic toward Middleton), but British paparazzi camped outside Mantel’s house and even Prime Minister David Cameron publicly criticized the speech. A leap forward to Thatcher’s Britain may seem like a departure for Mantel.

She won widespread praise for Wolf Hall and its sequel, Bring Up the Bodies, which serve as a reappraisal of Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s often-reviled chief minister and enforcer, and Thomas More, the reactionary Catholic who has usually been cast as a saint and martyr. (Theatrical adaptations arrive on Broadway next year; she is currently working on the final book of the trilogy.) And yet Mantel’s primary talent is her ability to describe, with great precision, the endless mental calculations about status and desire and power that comprise politics in every era, and to capture the functioning of institutions with drama and wit. The century may vary, but the sensibility translates. When I e-mailed Mantel to schedule an interview, she responded with remarkable warmth. (She began signing off, “Love, Hilary,” after only a few communications.) We met on a rainy August afternoon at her top-floor apartment in the village of Sunningdale, just outside of London, which has a large fireplace and rugs and walls that are stunningly white. We were joined by her husband, Gerald McEwen, who cares for Mantel.

(She suffers from the gynecological disease endometriosis, which somewhat limits her mobility.) I have never felt like I was visiting people who were more excited to see me, even though we had never met. After the conversation turned to Booker Prize winners, McEwen broke into a wide grin. “You are sitting with a Booker Prize winner right now, for Wolf Hall,” he said playfully. “Don’t forget Bring Up the Bodies,” Mantel mischievously responded. (She is one of only three authors to have won the award twice.) Mantel has been a novelist and essayist for many years, but her fame arrived relatively late, and she and McEwen evidently view it with wry amusement. During our conversation, we discussed the differences between historians and novelists, Britain’s male-dominated literary culture, and the legacy of a certain prime minister. Isaac Chotiner: How do you view Margaret Thatcher today? Hilary Mantel: I think it is going to take another fifty years for the report to be in. If I were to give a preliminary report, I would say that she wrecked this country. I loathed her. But that’s not so interesting. IC: It’s interesting to me.

HM: She aroused such strong loathing in so many people. That’s the fact that interests me. What is it we are hating? It goes beyond politics. I suppose that my fascination with her is not just with her political record but with her as a phenomenon. I think psychologically she is really worth studying. I am reading Charles Moore’s biography of her, and he has gotten us right there with a woman who lived the unexamined life, and lived it deliberately, and who has contempt for history, even her own. IC: Do you think that is what bothers you, the contempt for history? HM: I think it does, hugely. This is a woman who, when she wrote her entry for “Who’s Who,” didn’t include her mother. Now whether that was corrected in subsequent editions, I do not know. Perhaps when it was pointed out to her that she was born of woman ... IC: It wasn’t a virgin birth. HM: [Laughs] She admitted to being the daughter of her father but not the daughter of her mother! IC: Do you think some of the fascination has to do with the fact that she is a woman in the public eye? HM: Yes, I think it is a very big part.

I can’t think of any male politician who magnetizes love and hate—mainly hate—the way she did. But we have a number of very powerful women in the world now—Mrs. Merkel, who the Germans call Mutti. What did we call Mrs. Thatcher? IC: Salman Rushdie coined “Mrs. Torture” in The Satanic Verses. HM: Well yes, but worse. When she was minister of education, she stopped the children’s free school milk. This may sound quaint, but after the war we were such a malnourished nation that part of the founding of the welfare state were public health initiatives. Every little schoolchild got milk. Mrs. Thatcher stopped it. They called her “Maggie Thatcher, milk snatcher.” Now imagine the consequences of having the first woman prime minister who is the milk snatcher. She takes away the nourishment of the nation. IC: It seems like part of what bothers you is indeed her being a woman and pursuing the policies she did. HM: Yes, I think that is true. It was unfortunate for other women who might come after her that the first woman to become prime minister was a male impersonator.

And in order to successfully impersonate men, the woman launched a war. [laughs] IC: You mean the Falklands War? HM: Yes. She scorned and despised other women, and predicated her values entirely on the values of her father, a small town shopkeeper. She was always talking about what the prudent housewife should do and what the prudent housewife knew. She was pretending that running a country was like running a household, which she knew wasn’t true. IC: Sadly, the current American president does the same thing. He talks about how households need to balance their budgets and therefore the country does, too. HM: True. And I am sure that all politicians seek the home connection with the voter. But she carried it to extremes. It was complete bullshit and she knew it. But she assumed somehow that this would get the woman voter and all those juvenile male voters who wanted a well-regulated household with a woman who knew what she should be doing. IC: You mean juvenile in terms of intelligence, not age, I assume.

HM: I believe this was her estimate of the voter: “These people are so stupid that they will vote for me because they think I know how to run the household.” IC: She did win three times though. HM: She did. I can’t deny that. [pauses] It was not possible at that time to see where it was trending. What she made a play for was the acquisitive: our greedy nature. She set aside other things like an identification with community, altruism. The only collective that she understood was: Rally around and slay the enemy. Otherwise, she said there was no thing such as society. This is what I find so interesting psychologically. Where did she come from? She had no mother. Her father came from a very identifiable background: religious, highly conformist. IC: Methodist, right? HM: Yes, but public duty to the fore. One of the ideals she grew up with was self-denial and postponement of gratification, and yet she went about to create a greedy, short-term society. It is a paradox. IC: Hillary Clinton is often seen as acting tougher because of the constraints of being a woman in politics. Do you see Thatcher parallels?

HM: Everything you say may be true about what women need to do in public life. To me, Hillary looks alright. She looks like the kind of woman I admire. She doesn’t seem to have distorted her essential nature. IC: I think most Americans, whether they like Thatcher or not, view her as sincere rather than constructed. And I think many people view the Clintons as constructed. Maybe this is the distance with which Americans view British politics and vice versa. HM: That is very interesting. To a Brit of my generation, one of the most objectionable things about Thatcher is her falsity. She is a total construct. For one thing, she had a made-over accent. IC: That is a bigger thing in the United Kingdom. HM: It is. It would be comic if it weren’t so tragic. IC: For the record, is this your real accent? HM: It is. It is. It is not the accent I was born with. IC: Oh, we are getting somewhere. HM: But I have lived a lot of different places. 1 Thatcher could fake her class background, but she couldn’t fake the quality of her mind.

IC: How did you come to think about the title story, which concerns her assassination in 1983? HM: I saw it happen, so to speak. I lived on the street described [in the story]. I looked out on the window described. And I saw her come out on the grounds of the hospital as described. And certain thoughts passed through my head. I have been living with it ever since. I have tried to write it any number of times, but I couldn’t make it come out. Then a few months ago, I just got so tired of the whole thing and I said, I am not leaving the house until I make the story work. I had nine stories and I needed a tenth. IC: You must know you are going to get some trouble for this. HM: It is describing a “might have been.” And every leader operates under the threat of assassination. I will get into trouble, I am sure, because since my Kate Middleton speech and before, certain papers were after me. I am not saying, however, that it would have been moral or right to assassinate Mrs. Thatcher, but I know it will be read that way. I know it will cause a problem.

IC: Have you been following this debate in Britain about how patriotic to make the curriculum? 2 HM: In a mild way. I do myself think that history is a set of skills rather than a narrative. When people begin to talk about “our island story” my hackles rise. It is deluded and conservative. IC: I was wondering how you feel about the monarchy today, and how much the existence of the monarchy strengthens things you find distasteful about the national story. HM: I think if the monarchy were removed tomorrow, it wouldn’t have a huge effect on the national mind-set. I think the monarchy today is. . . mildly interesting and largely harmless. I can’t find I can get very heated about it. In the next couple of generations, it is bound to go. There is so much else in the world that is more interesting. My concern is less the monarchy as such than the attempt of a fading colonial power to hang onto grandeur. When I came to write my Thomas Cromwell books, I moved onto the center ground of English history, but I was never there before. I didn’t feel it was my history particularly, coming from Northern Britain, being of Irish extraction, being a cradle Catholic.

The image of England I grew up with felt somewhere else. There was an official England in postcards, but it wasn’t one I had visited. But I decided to march onto the center ground and occupy it whether it was mine or not. IC: You mention being a cradle Catholic, and I gather you don’t practice anymore? HM: No. IC: In your books, the picture of Thomas More, who is a Catholic hero to many people, is very bleak. It feels like you set out to correct the record about him and the fact that he was an extremist. HM: To my astonishment, when Wolf Hall came out, people asked if I made it up—his burning of heretics. It was well documented. And he was proud of it! The Brits love lost causes. IC: Dunkirk. HM: Yes. The worship of Thomas More goes beyond Catholics. IC: I am not sure Catholics have just been romanticized in England. They have been persecuted. HM: Yes, of course. But people will identify with a persecuted minority without asking themselves what they are identifying with. IC: What is that experience of adaptation into theater like? HM: When we began, there was only one book.

What was actually commissioned was one play. Now that we have two plays, the complexities multiply. And then the Royal Shakespeare Company got involved. I’ve become more and more drawn into it. At the same time as the play adaptations, the BBC adaptation has been marching forward. A different take on the material. I have been less involved with the television production than with the theater. But this is unique because it is a work in progress. I haven’t finished the third book. In this case, it is alive! IC: Is it strange to see actors give their own spin to your characters? HM: It helps hugely with the third book. The third book, in subtle ways, feeds back into the plays. IC: It makes you think about the characters in different ways? HM: It concentrates you on the present moment. It also reminds me, watching it, that characters did not know their fate. IC: They must have had some sense, dealing with Henry VIII. 3 HM: That was a tricky business. You might think you can outlive him. Watching live actors onstage, in something that changes night by night, real people picking up cues from each other, it concentrates you on the process rather than the result.

IC: Speaking of process, I am curious what the step is between historical research and then writing fiction from that. HM: For me, it is about using everything that is there and using the gaps in the record, figuring out why the gaps might be there. And then when you move on to the level of what historians said, laying the interpretations side by side. You also have to look back at the documents and make your own judgments. What the record says and what people say about it. A novelist can fill the gaps in a way that a biographer cannot. One of the frustrations of someone like Thomas Cromwell is that, before they step into the light of history, and become extremely well documented, they are not known. A king might be well documented but not everyone. IC: So you feel like you have more license if we don’t have the facts? HM: Yes, but it is not favored. The more facts I can have, the better. I can operate very nicely between them, but I am not very good at making things up. I am not sure how ethical it is. [laughs] I am not a historian. I don’t see what I do as being a rival to biography. It’s complementary.

It’s fairly clear where the boundaries are. When I start telling you the contents of his head, I am making it up. But I try to make it up based on what is on the record. So even my wildest speculations will have a root somewhere. IC: I am going to make up things you said for this interview based on things you said previously. Fill in the gaps. HM: But you have me here to ask any question you like! IC: We have been talking about monarchy, but you lived in a non-constitutional one, in Saudi Arabia, in the 1980s. And one of your stories takes place there. HM: What a wonderful opportunity! How many people in the present day have the chance to not only live in an absolute monarchy but in a theocracy? They were domestic circumstances. It was like a Gothic novel if you are a woman. When I landed at King Abdullah International Airport at three a.m. for the first time, I thought, I am going to get a book out of this. I hadn’t published anything, but I knew. That’s what made me able to stand it. We got to live in a flat in the city. That meant we got to see society.

IC: When 9/11 happened, did you feel like you had a different perspective than other people? HM: I thought totally so. I have a great and genuine respect for Islam, which I got when I was there. But I also saw the tendencies that led to war against the West. That was in every conversation. IC: Where do you think it comes from? HM: It comes from quite primitive impulses. Where does anti-Semitism come from? To see the vile cartoons in the Arab press ... The Holocaust denial. You have maps and Israel isn’t on them! That is institutional, it is official. The information that people had about the West was so heavily distorted. Of course it comes as a shock, however much you know it theoretically. It’s an education. It’s beliefs about women and law and morality and society. It was quite fascinating. You can’t get it out of books. You have to have the conversations. IC: I was going to ask about other historical novelists you might like. In the last fifty years or so, Norman Mailer has tried it. Gore Vidal. HM: My first book was a historical novel. I started writing in 1974.

In those days, historical novels meant ladies with swelling bosoms on the cover. Basically, it meant historical romance. It was not respectable as a genre. People who wrote literary novels about the past probably didn’t want them pegged as historical fiction. Certainly that was true in England. I loved Gore Vidal’s Burr. That book gave me courage. Thomas Keneally, the Australian author. IC: What other writers and essayists have you been influenced by? You also write essays. HM: When I began to read as an adult, my first big enthusiasm was Evelyn Waugh. I read almost exclusively novelists of a generation back. I did the Russians, then I started getting more up to date. When you become published and become a reviewer, piles of books come along and you are pushed by fashion and what you are commissioned to do. The writer I adore is Ivy Compton-Burnett. 4 Usually saying this ends a conversation. IC: I am going to leave. HM: I couldn’t get more than a few pages in when I first read her. In many ways, she is very clumsy and her plots are rubbish. But we don’t read her for that. There are pages and pages of dialogue.

What it requires is real effort and attention. If I am feeling broken, I can pick up one of her books and the next morning I can write again. It puts my mechanism back. In terms of essays, I would say Oliver Sacks. His breadth of hard knowledge and imagination and empathy seems to constitute the perfect mind to me. IC: I heard a story that you were at a literary event with Martin Amis and Christopher Hitchens and Ian McEwan. And Hitchens said that he stood in a corner being social only with his friends and that he felt so embarrassed afterward. He said he acted like a high-schooler. HM: Oh, bless him. It was a very funny conference. I knew him before that. He had always been a good angel to me. He once stole a phrase from me that came out of his mouth on television. I saw his eyes move sideways. I thought, It’s alright, you can have it! The conference was light on women. Salman Rushdie showed up, they were doing their own thing. I didn’t feel neglected! They took us on a walk for miles and miles. It was a themed garden. Hitchens was so unfit that he kept trying to take shortcuts.

It was like Alice in Wonderland, because he would appear on top of a hill and realize he was on the wrong side of a river or in the wrong place. I remember the helplessness on his face. I was rather fond of him. Thanks to her husband’s work as a geologist, Mantel has lived in the Middle East and Africa. Michael Gove, the UK’s former secretary of education, had pushed for a more patriotic curriculum; this was opposed by many academics and writers. He had a tendency to execute his enemies. The English writer who wrote about the upper classes, and is famous for her witty dialogue. Read More Sign up for your daily dose of politics, culture, and big ideas. Sign Up Top 10 books about Thatcherism | Books | The Guardian Top 10s Top 10 books about Thatcherism From accounts by past Tory ministers to oblique cultural references, and Hilary Mantel’s imagining of a premature death, the UK’s only female prime minister has not been overlooked in print Prime minister Margaret Thatcher addresses the Conservative party conference in 1982.

Photograph: Nils Jorgensen/Rex Features Wednesday 23 September 2015 12.34 EDT Last modified on Tuesday 19 July 2016 09.11 EDT Share on Messenger Close Margaret Thatcher was Britain’s most controversial modern politician. She continues to divide opinion in Britain, and arguments about her legacy are as heated now as they have ever been. To many on the left, she represented a harsh, uncompromising approach to politics: she was confrontational, aggressive and overtly ideological. To some on the right, she was simply a saviour who dragged Britain from the ungovernable abyss represented by the 1970s. As can only be expected with such a controversial figure, there have been many books written about her legacy and style of politics. Mrs Thatcher not only made history by becoming Britain’s first female prime minister, she was the first woman to hold any comparable position in the western world. It was this novelty, as much as anything, that caused the Soviets to call her the “Iron Lady” in 1976.

From the start of her leadership of the Conservative party in February 1975, Thatcher’s style seemed shrill and uncompromising, and she became an easy object of mockery. When she left office nearly 16 years later, she was a widely recognised, but clearly still highly controversial, figure. These are some of the books that deal with her life and political achievements: 1. Not for Turning , and Everything She Wants by Charles Moore (2013, November 2015) This two-volume account is the definitive biography which is unlikely to be surpassed any time soon. Well written and objective, this is a comprehensive account of Thatcher’s life and career. As a biography, it is written very much on a Victorian scale but it is human, readable and sensitive. 2. The Grocer’s Daughter and The Iron Lady by John Campbell (2000, 2003) Another impressive two-volume account of Thatcher’s life and career. While (former Telegraph editor) Moore is broadly sympathetic, Campbell’s hostility to the philosophy of Thatcherism is all too apparent in these books. Both volumes are worth a read, although Moore’s efforts will probably supersede this earlier biography. 3.

The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst (2004) Hollinghurst’s controversial and brilliant novel, which won the Booker prize in 2004, tells the story of a gay affair in the 80s, at the height of Thatcher’s political dominance. The Iron Lady herself is an ever haunting presence in the background of the story, although she is not integral to it. 4. Thatcher and Sons , by Simon Jenkins (2006) A controversial non-fiction account of New Labour, showing how both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were hugely influenced by the example of Thatcher. Jenkins stresses Thatcher’s role in centralising power and her abilities as a manipulator of the media. 5. Margaret Thatcher: Power and Personality by Jonathan Aitken (2013) Jonathan Aitken was a Conservative MP from 1974 to 1997 and was famously denied promotion because he had made Carol [Thatcher’s daughter] cry. His charming account benefits from first-hand experience of the House of Commons and politics, while having been an ex-boyfriend of the subject’s daughter he writes with a degree of critical detachment. 6.

Billy Elliot by Melvin Burgess (2001) The novelisation of Lee Hall and Stephen Daldry’s award-winning film, telling the story of a young boy from a mining village who dreams of becoming a ballet dancer. The story is a commentary on Thatcher’s Britain from a decidedly hostile political viewpoint. A brilliant and deservedly successful story that is overtly critical of Margaret Thatcher’s legacy. 7. The Downing Street Years by Margaret Thatcher (1993) A personalised and, in some ways, self-justificatory account of Thatcher’s own premiership. As is to be expected, she is blunt about the challenging people she confronted, and doesn’t leave any room for doubt regarding the decisions that she took as prime minister. Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev with Margaret Thatcher in 1989, with defence minister Alan Clark in the background. Photograph: Rex 8.

Diaries by Alan Clark (1993, 2000, 2002) In Power, 1983-1992, the first of Clark’s three volumes of diaries (though second in chronological sequence), directly corresponds with Thatcher at the height of her authority, and contains one of the best accounts of her political demise. Clark is funny, irreverent, lascivious and ultimately thwarted in his ambition to become a cabinet minister. His diaries are a literary landmark of the period. 9. Not for Turning by Robin Harris (2013) Harris, a former director of the Conservative Research Unit, is very much a cheerleader and supporter of Thatcher’s political mission. His account of her life is fulsome and proud, giving good insights into her political preoccupations. This is very much an account for supporters, although the writing is accessible for all. 10. The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher by Hilary Mantel (2014) This controversial, and slightly bizarre short story, recently longlisted for the BBC short story awards, marks the intense fascination and hatred Thatcher aroused amongst the political left. Mantel cannot disguise her loathing of everything Thatcher stood for.

An interesting, although slightly warped, counterbalance to generally positive more recent biographies and skilful piece of writing. Kwasi Kwarteng is Conservative MP for Spelthorne, Surrey Kwasi Kwarteng’s Thatcher’s Trial: Six months that defined a leader, is available from the Guardian Bookshop for £16 (rrp £20). Go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846 Hilary Mantel's novel "Wolf Hall" to become TV series on BBC | starMedia Date: 2014-05-16 14:32:11 By: Cinthya Lara Via: Associated Press Hilary Mantel's novel "Wolf Hall" to become TV series on BBC Hilary Mantel's best seller novel "Wolf Hall" will be turned into TV series on BBC and will be also adapted into a play. Read for details. Hilary Mantel's novel "Wolf Hall" to become TV series on BBC Like its sharp-toothed namesake, "Wolf Hall" is a fearsome beast.

Hilary Mantel's Booker Prize-winning best-seller about deadly intrigue at the court of King Henry VIII will soon be a BBC series with Tony Award-winner Mark Rylance and "Homeland" star Damian Lewis. "Wolf Hall" and sequel "Bring Up the Bodies" have already been adapted into plays that plunge audiences into a world of murky Tudor machinations. As the plays move to London's West End after a rave-gathering run at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon, Mantel said the characters' complex motives and shades of gray were key to the stories' adaptability. "They are highly ambivalent and ambiguous characters — and of course there's a lot of mileage in that," Mantel said before the double bill's opening at the Aldwych Theatre on Saturday. The story's center — the wolf of "Wolf Hall" — is Thomas Cromwell, a blacksmith's son who rose to become the feared and canny counselor to Henry VIII. On the page — and the stage, where he's played by Ben Miles — he's hungry, gimlet-eyed and ruthless, but also wry, clever and modern, a flawed hero who has captivated millions of readers.

It was Cromwell — who had been a soldier, a banker and a lawyer — who kept Henry's coffers full and negotiated the monarch's divorce from Catherine of Aragon so that he could marry Anne Boleyn. It was the most sensational divorce in British history, leading the king to break with Rome and declare himself head of the new Church of England. Mantel gives this oft-told story the pace and twists of a political thriller. Fans of political drama might see "House of Cards" as "Wolf Hall" in modern clothes. It's no surprise the books have spawned a mini-industry of stage and screen adaptations — they are a literary sensation. Both "Wolf Hall" and "Bring Up the Bodies" won the prestigious Booker Prize, and together they've sold several million copies around the world. When the plays opened in Stratford earlier this year, Mantel was (very politely) mobbed by fans in the theater lobby. And to think Mantel was told, early in her career, that no one was interested in historical fiction. The plays are the work of Mike Poulton, who has adapted classics by authors including Charles Dickens and Anton Chekhov.

Mantel was closely involved in the adaptation, and while that could be a recipe for tension, Poulton said it turned out to be "a joyous collaboration." "Hilary has done all the work — years and years of research," he said. "She hands me on a plate countless plotlines and says 'Choose which one.' ... And also these wonderful characters that were just saying 'Please, please take me off this page and let me walk about on the stage.'" He said the only problem was knowing when to stop. "We're never absolutely happy," Poulton said. "We are still writing. Hilary wrote a line this morning." Mantel is less directly involved in the TV series, a six-part adaptation of both books that is written by Peter Straughan. He's an old hand at intrigue, having adapted John Le Carre's spy classic "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" for the screen. Rylance, who plays Cromwell, has said the adaptation is "ingenious and faithful." The series is currently filming, with a cast that includes Lewis as the king, Claire Foy as Anne Boleyn and Jonathan Pryce as Cromwell's mentor Cardinal Wolsey.

It's due to air next year on the BBC in Britain and PBS in the United States. Mantel has said there won't be a feature film — the story could never fit into a two-hour running time. Away from the 16th century, Mantel has a book of short stories, intriguingly titled "The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher," coming out in the fall. And then she has to bring Cromwell's story to a close. Mantel is currently writing the final volume of her Tudor trilogy, "The Mirror and the Light," and she says the book is being subtly changed by working on the plays. "It's a unique project, because you're adapting something that isn't actually finished yet," said Mantel, who admits to quizzing lead actor Miles for clues to Cromwell's character: "'How do you think this works? How does that feel?" She said actors "can tell you how it feels from the inside, which is what a novelist always wants to know." "And there's nothing like watching a live show that's different every night for reminding you that these were living, breathing human beings. They're not paper constructs.

They're not the fabrications of historians — they're flesh and blood." related topics Critiques of Hilary Mantel are misguided | The Student Critiques of Hilary Mantel are misguided featured Mantel needs to see a therapist. This is what Lord Timothy Bell had to say concerning the short story the Booker Prize winning author published in The Guardian last week, entitled ‘The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher: 6th August 1983’. However, whilst Bell and others on the Right have lined Hilary Mantel up for her own character assassination, they have failed to grasp both the nuances of her story as well as their own political blindness. What must be recognised first and foremost is that Mantel is writing a piece of fiction. To therefore take it as a genuine wish that Thatcher had been assassinated is to misunderstand the creative boundaries within which Mantel is writing. Through imagining the ultimate act of political dissent she highlights the violent division Thatcher created in British society – the foci of assassination can therefore be taken as a representation of the genuine ferocity with which many in Britain and Ireland regard the former Prime Minister. The literal interpretation by Mantel’s detractors fails to recognise the complexity of her writing.

To continue from this point, to attack Mantel as “sick and deranged” is also to ignore the divisiveness of Thatcher, something that even the Right would struggle to achieve. However, there is an uncomfortable tendency to place Thatcher on a pedestal, untouchable and immortal. The fact is that no leader, particularly one as controversial as the Iron Lady, should be removed from criticism in this way. Mantel’s critics seem to fail to understand the extremes which Thatcher pushed people to in her premiership – extremes which are so fiercely embodied in Mantel’s IRA sniper. But, as the assassin dejectedly notes himself, “They’re Englishmen […] They can’t remember bugger-all.” Ironically, the Right’s response to ‘The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher’ has been as vitriolic as they claim the story itself to be. Any reader who, like Tory MP Stewart Jackson, finds it to be full of “bile and hate” should perhaps turn to it another, more critical, eye. While the assassination itself is the climax to which the writing gradually but inevitably leads, the real political discussion takes place in the relationship between the uninvited assassin and his unwitting, middle class host.

The dynamic of these characters explores the diversity of legitimate grievances shared by many under Thatcher, from the disgust of her “fake femininity”, to the seething anger at ten Republican martyrs who were the victim of hunger strike. Through the considered and sometimes humorous dialogue, Mantel crafts a thoughtful argument about the extent of the damage Thatcher did in Britain and Ireland. It is in the relationship between the characters, and not the ultimate act of assassination, that Thatcher is truly damned. Mantel’s critics have seen the word ‘assassination’ and have jumped to the conclusion that she would have supported the unquestioned and ritual execution of the late Prime Minister. This is not the case. Through the brilliance of her writing, Mantel has created a human criticism of Thatcher, which makes the extreme of assassination understandable The vitriolic right wing response has shown a lack of understanding, not only of the nuances August 1983. However, whilst Bell and others of a fictive piece, but also of the strength of feeling some hold over the British Isles.

Mantel provides the perfect assessment of such critics: to them, “all causes are the same, all ideas for which a person might care to die: they are nuisances, a breach of the peace, and likely to hold up the traffic or delay the trains.” "Mantel Defiant over Story of Thatcher Assassination" - The Evening Standard (London, England), September 22, 2014 | Online Research Library: Questia Article excerpt Byline: Louise Jury Chief Arts Correspondent AWARD-winning author Hilary Mantel was unrepentant today in the face of an avalanche of criticism over her story imagining the assassination of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Speaking on Radio 4's Start the Week, the writer simply explained her drive to turn a true incident in which she saw the late Tory leader at a vulnerable moment into a work of fiction. "It is really a parallel universe story about what would happen if there was a door in the wall and you stepped thought it and history on the other side was completely different," she said. "Immediately you know this is something to write about, but how? And the search occupied me all these years.

My solution is saying I want to make a book of 10 stories, I have nine. I am staying in the house until Mrs Thatcher's story resolves itself." Mantel's short story, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, was sparked by a moment in 1983 when the writer saw the prime minister who died last year and thought what it would be like to kill her. But it took her 30 years to translate the incident into the title story of her new short story collection in which a middle-class Thatcher-hating woman allows an IRA killer into her flat opposite a hospital in Windsor where the Tory leader is recuperating from eye surgery.

… Subscribe to Questia and enjoy: Full access to this article and over 10 million more from academic journals, magazines, and newspapers Over 83,000 books Access to powerful writing and research tools Article details BBC Blogs - About the BBC - Why we've selected Hilary Mantel's short stories for Book at Bedtime Why we've selected Hilary Mantel's short stories for Book at Bedtime Sunday 14 December 2014, 17:45 There has been some media coverage on Radio 4's decision to broadcast readings from Hilary Mantel's short stories The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher next year. I'd like to explain the decision. Our readings programmes - notably Book at Bedtime and Book of the Week - present modern and classic literature every week of the year. In doing so, they present a wide range of perspectives on all manner of issues. Only last year, Charles Moore's official biography of Margaret Thatcher was Book of the Week . The readings may delight, challenge, frustrate, educate or simply entertain - as the best literature from around the world should. But they are chosen on merit and with our audience in mind.

And we will not shy away from literature simply because it touches upon controversial subject matter. So to the case in point. The work of Hilary Mantel - a double Booker Prize-winning author and one of the most popular authors of our generation - is of significant interest to the public. Naturally, her first collection of short stories is something which we think the Radio 4 audience will be keen to hear. That one of the four stories that will be read in January is about a fictional assassination attempt on Margaret Thatcher is, of course, something we discussed. But we believe our audience is sophisticated enough to accept a broad range of viewpoints, and we are loath to censor or avoid significant works of literature because they might be controversial; we would rather present the work and let listeners make up their own minds. The reading of Hilary Mantel's collection will no doubt provoke further discussion between now and its broadcast in the New Year. It will not be a first time - books have been central to public discourse for centuries and will continue to provoke debate. Tagged with:

Question: Hilary Mantel's controversial 2014 fictional story is "The Assassination of (Which controversial leader?)" ?
Answer: Margaret Thatcher