- Hilary Mantel WOLF HALL. I've followed Mantel's career with interest since reading her very first book 20 or more years ago. That was brave and original. Wolf Hall is simply stunning. If you don't know much about the mid-Tudor period, you will if you read it. But if you do know a lot about that period, you will be even more impressed, as she constantly takes situations recorded in history and reinterprets them as fiction, making them fizz with colour. I was fascinated by the ending - rushing to my 'Kings and Queens of History' to check certain dates. I'm still not sure if she's saying what she seems to be saying, but it's certainly staying in my mind as the most enigmatic ending...up there with Basic Instinct...(UK 2009)
