Hilary Mantel is the author of seventeen books, including A Place of Greater Safety, Beyond Black, the memoir Giving Up the Ghost and the short story collection The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher. Her latest novel, The Mirror & the Light, won the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, while Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies were both awarded the Booker Prize.

'Hilary Mantel has soaked herself in the history of the period!and a striking picture emerges of the exhilaration, dynamic energy and stark horror of those fearful days.' Daily Telegraph 'Superbly readable!nothing less than a well-researched but richly idiosyncratic fictional history of the French Revolution!an assured and strange masterpiece.' Sunday Telegraph 'I cannot think of a historical novel as good as this until on goes back to Marguerite Yourcenar's "Memoirs of Hadrian", published forty years ago.' Evening Standard 'Marvellous!her great achievement is not just in making these long-dead demagogues live and breathe, but setting them in a brilliantly-realised family context, and surrounding them with vivid womenfolk who question, challenge or endure. It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. Hilary Mantel captures it all.' Time Out 'Crafty tensions, twists and high drama!a bravura display of her endlessly inventive, eerily observant style' Times Literary Supplement 'An extraordinary and overwhelming novel!immensely detailed and yet fast-moving!she has set herself to capture the excitement and intellectual fervour of the period. She does it admirably!a tour de force.' Allan Massie, Scotsman 'This is a high-class historical blockbuster.' Red Magazine