Hilary Mantel’s Lectures on Historical Fiction

Four years ago, the novelist responsible for Wolf Hall and other acclaimed works of historical fiction delivered a series of five public lectures for the BBC. Collectively entitled “Resurrection: The Art and Craft,” Hilary Mantel’s 2017 Reith Lectures are still available online.

I think very highly of these addresses, which show great sensitivity to the nature of history as well as literature. Anyone responsible for historical storytelling—in fiction or nonfiction—could benefit from them. But they’re a little difficult to find on the BBC’s website, so I’m arranging direct links here.

1. The Day Is For the Living, June 13, 2017, Manchester (transcript PDF): “Memory, mourning, and how the stories we tell ourselves shape our view of the past—and what happens on the threshold when private and public history meet.”
2. The Iron Maiden, June 20, 2017, London (transcript PDF): “How does fact pass so readily into legend? Do we use the past as a mirror, and prefer a version that flatters us?”
3. Silence Grips the Town, June 27, 2017, Antwerp (transcript PDF): “The story of a Polish writer whose efforts to work history into fiction were so intense that they consumed and killed her. Was she a martyr to history? Or just wrongheaded?”
4. Can These Bones Live?, July 4, 2017, Exeter (transcript PDF): “The task of the historical novelist is to balance the claims of fact against the power of invention. It’s a balance that must be kept phrase by phrase [through] craft and technique.”
5. Adaptation, July 11, 2017, Stratford-upon-Avon (transcript PDF): “Adaptation [for stage and screen] is not a compromise or a betrayal of an original, but an actual necessary and creative act, one we perform every day.”