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Secret Life of Books
Every book has two stories: the one it tells, and the one it hides.
The Secret Life of Books is a fascinating, addictive, often shocking, occasionally hilarious weekly podcast starring Sophie Gee, an English professor at Princeton University, and Jonty Claypole, formerly director of arts at the BBC.
Every week these virtuoso critics and close friends take an iconic book and reveal the hidden story behind the story: who made it, their clandestine motives, the undeclared stakes, the scandalous backstory and above all the secret, mysterious meanings of books we thought we knew.
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Secret Life of Books
Wolf Hall: is this the best historical novel ever written?
Hello Thomas Cromwell. And Hello Lev Grossman, best-selling author of The Magicians trilogy, the Silver Arrow children’s books, and now The Bright Sword, who joins Sophie and Jonty as THEIR FIRST EVER GUEST to talk about Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall.
Published in 2009 to immediate acclaim, Wolf Hall reinvented historical fiction and changed the way we see Henry VIII and the Tudor court of 16th Century England. Mantel’s idea was to tell the story of Henry VIII and his disastrous marriages through the eyes of his right-hand man Thomas Cromwell. Traditionally thought of as mysterious and Machievallian, Cromwell, in Mantel’s hands, becomes a heroic survivor, navigating his way through a treacherous world.
Behind this irresistible story lies Mantel’s own unique philosophy of history, her belief in ghosts and her experience of chronic pain (through endemetriosis). Lev Grossman shares his insights as an author profoundly influenced by Mantel’s use of character, dialogue and perspective; an author who is also, in his view, a master of ‘the title-drop’.
Personal revelations abound too. In a shock reveal, Sophie discloses that she is married to Lev, while Jonty manages to trace his personal ancestry back to Thomas Cromwell’s brutal father Walter - raising the alarming possibility of a Putney-style rampage through the SLOB studio.
Visit the Secret Life of Books and join a conversation about the episode and the show: https://www.secretlifeofbooks.org/forum
Further Reading:
- Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall (Fourth Estate, 2009)
- Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety (Harper Perennial, 2009)
- Hilary Mantel, Giving Up the Ghost (Harper Perennial, 2009)
Listen:
- The Reith Lectures, Hilary Mantel (BBC)
