The Mirror and the Light

Hilary Mantel author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:HarperCollins Publishers

Published:7th Nov '24

Should be back in stock very soon

This paperback is available in other editions too:

The Mirror and the Light cover

The stunning conclusion to the Booker Prize-winning and bestselling Wolf Hall trilogy, now a major TV series

Now a major TV series The Sunday Times bestseller Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction Longlisted for the Booker Prize

‘It is a book not read, but lived’ Telegraph

‘Her Cromwell novels are, for my money, the greatest English novels of this century’ Observer

‘If you cannot speak truth at a beheading, when can you speak it?’

The Mirror & The Light begins after the death of Anne Boleyn. As her remains are bundled into oblivion, Thomas Cromwell breakfasts with the victors. The blacksmith’s son has knocked down everyone in his path: established at the right hand of Henry VIII, he is the second man in England. But what will you do, an astute witness asks, when the king turns on you, as sooner or later he turns on everyone close to him?

Heralded as the greatest English novels of this century, the Wolf Hall trilogy has won two Booker Prizes and been adapted into hugely successful stage plays. The first two books, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, were transformed into a BAFTA- and Golden Globe-winning BBC television series, starring Mark Rylance and Damian Lewis. The cast now returns in the long-awaited concluding series, Wolf Hall: The Mirror & the Light.

A Guardian Book of the Year • A Times Book of the Year • A Daily Telegraph Book of the Year • A Sunday Times Book of the Year • A New Statesman Book of the Year • A Spectator Book of the Year

Sunday Times Bestseller (08/03/2020)

‘A masterpiece … Mantel has redefined what the historical novel is capable of … her Cromwell novels are, for my money, the greatest English novels of this centuryObserver

‘Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall novels make 99 per cent of contemporary literary fiction feel utterly pale and bloodless by comparisonThe Times

‘Hilary Mantel has written an epic of English history that does what the Aeneid did for the Romans and War and Peace for the Russians. We are lucky to have it’ Sunday Telegraph

‘Very few writers manage not just to excavate the sedimented remains of the past, but bring them up again into the light and air so that they shine brightly once more before us. Hilary Mantel has done just that’ Simon Schama, Financial Times

A masterpiece that will keep yielding its riches, changing as its readers change, going forward with us into the futureGuardian

The most masterful story telling imaginable’ Graham Norton

‘The final book in the trilogy charts [Cromwell’s] inexorable downfall with the dark brilliance and profound humanity that makes it, like its forerunners, a masterpieceDaily Mail

‘Ambitious, compassionate, clear-eyed yet emotional, passionate and pragmatic, The Mirror & the Light lays down a marker for historical fiction that will set the standard for generations to comeIndependent

‘It’s the crowning glory of a towering achievement’ Mail on Sunday

‘This is a must-read’ Good Housekeeping

‘On closing the book I wept as I’ve not wept over a novel since I was a child … Mantel struck her spear against the flint of Thomas Cromwell, and lit such a candle in England as will never go out’ Telegraph

ISBN: 9780008739553

Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 55mm

Weight: 860g

912 pages

TV tie-in edition