Mantel Takes Up Betrayal, Beheadings In 'Bodies'

Transcript

DAVID BIANCULLI, BYLINE: Hilary Mantel has completed two-thirds of her "Wolf Hall" trilogy, focusing on Cromwell and the reign of Henry VIII. Readers are awaiting the third and final volume. The first two books, "Wolf Hall" and "Bring Up The Bodies," both received Britain's most coveted literary award, the Man Booker Prize. In the U.S., "Wolf Hall" also won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. And not only have her first two books been made into a new TV series, they've also been adapted into a highly acclaimed London stage play, which is in previews now in the U.S. It opens officially on Broadway on April 9. Hilary Mantel lives in England. She spoke with Terry Gross in 2012.

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TERRY GROSS, HOST:

Hilary Mantel, welcome to FRESH AIR and congratulations on your second Man Booker Prize. It's quite an accomplishment.

HILARY MANTEL: Thank you.

GROSS: So, I'd love to start from a reading - with a reading from the new book, "Bring Up The Bodies." And this is toward the very end of the book, when Anne Boleyn is getting executed. And there are many executions in your books. (Laughter). The first book ends with an execution and so does the second. So, before you read this passage, I'd like you to just explain what's happening and who is speaking in the passage that you're going to read.

MANTEL: Well, we first have Thomas Cromwell, who's Henry's chief minister and the organizer of the plot to bring down Anne Boleyn. We are almost at the last moment now. Henry has sent for the executioner from Calais to behead his wife with a sword rather than the customary ax, in the hope it will give her a quicker death. So we have Cromwell, we have the French executioner and we have Christophe, a young ruffian who's a servant to Cromwell.

(Reading) The weapon is heavy, needing a two-handed grip. It's almost four-foot in length, two inches broad, round at the tip, a double edge. One practices like this, the executioner says, he whirls like a dancer on the spot, his arms held high, his fists together as if he were gripping the sword. Every day one must handle the weapon, if only to go through the motions. One may be called at any time. We do not kill so many in Calais, but one goes to other towns. It is a good trade, Christophe says. He wants to handle the sword, but he, Cromwell, does not want to let go of it yet. The man says, they tell me I may speak French to her and she will understand me. Yes, do so, Cromwell says. But she will kneel. She must be informed of this. There is no block, as you see. She must kneel upright and not move. If she is steady, it will be done in a moment. If not, she will be cut to pieces. He hands back the weapon. I could answer for her. The executioner says, between one beat of the heart and the next, it is done. She knows nothing. She is in eternity. They walk away. Christophe says, Master, that man has said to me, tell the women that she should wrap her skirts about her feet when she kneels in case she falls bad and shows off to the world what so many fine gentlemen have already seen. He does not reprove the boy for his coarseness - he is crude but correct. When the moment comes, it will prove, the women do it anyway. They must have discussed it among themselves.

GROSS: Thank you for reading that.

And that's Hilary Mantel reading from the end - not the very end, but near the end of her latest novel, "Bring Up The Bodies," which won the Man Booker award, Britain's highest literary prize.

You know, it's such a - you just kind of shiver hearing that passage. And it just made me think, you know, about executions like - it makes the guillotine seem very humane by comparison. You know, where you're describing that if she moves - if Anne Boleyn moves while the sword's coming down that, you know, she'll be cut to pieces, it won't be a swift death.

MANTEL: Yes. They were asking her to do something very difficult, which was to remain absolutely still in the knowledge of what was coming. But the executioner was a man who obviously knew his trade, and what he did was to approach Anne from an angle that she wasn't expecting. She was blindfolded and she couldn't hear him because he was wearing soft slippers and it happened before she knew. And she did remain kneeling upright. Usually, executions were with the ax and the sufferer put their head on a block. But Henry thought that this was a more skillful, humane way of doing it. It's strange that he should have such a scruple at the last moment.

GROSS: This is very thoughtful, if you're executing your wife, to do it so humanely.

MANTEL: Yes, it seems strange to us, doesn't it? But for a while the people at the Tower of London didn't know whether Anne was to be beheaded or burned, and you know, typical bureaucrats - they're sending frantic notes saying, what kind of scaffold have we to build? When you look at it through the bureaucratic language, it all becomes even more chilling because to them it's just an administrative problem. They just want to get things done efficiently. After all, it's not every day that one executes a queen of England.

BIANCULLI: Hilary Mantel, author of the "Wolf Hall" novels, speaking to Terry Gross in 2012. More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

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BIANCULLI: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to Terry's 2012 interview with author Hilary Mantel. Her "Wolf Hall" books have been made into a TV miniseries premiering this weekend on PBS "Masterpiece" and also have inspired a hit British play, now imported and in previews on Broadway.

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GROSS: So I'm not sure if this is something you thought about before or not, but I know that you wrote - I think it was your very first book - about the French Revolution.

MANTEL: Sure.

GROSS: And now you've written about Henry VIII, and, you know, there are several beheadings in these books. So excuse me for asking this, but if you had to be beheaded (laughter) centuries ago, would you have preferred the guillotine or the ax or sword customarily used in England?

MANTEL: Well, it's a strange question.

GROSS: I thought so (laughter).

MANTEL: But, no, I'm quite prepared to answer that, I think. The guillotine never failed, you know, whereas the headsman occasionally - as in fact in the case of the execution of Thomas Cromwell himself - was either not expert enough or maybe having a bad day. And the whole thing could take a long time. At least the guillotine was over in seconds.

GROSS: And...

MANTEL: However, you know, I am hoping this fate will not befall me.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: No, I suspect it won't. And Cromwell will be executed in the final book in your trilogy, which you're writing now.

MANTEL: Yes, 1540 - the final book covers his rise and rise. He's a long way to go yet. And then his son will fall in execution in the summer of 1540.

GROSS: One of the things I find so interesting about, you know, reading historical fiction in a period of beheadings in England is that we're now in a period where Islamist extremists are beheading people, and it is so shocking that now people would be beheaded. But when you think of the part it played in Western history, that's shocking, too.

MANTEL: Yes, and I have lived in Saudi Arabia and indeed written a book about Saudi Arabia. So whilst I am happy to say that I never witnessed anything of that kind, you knew that it went on - that beheading and public beheading was the normal form of execution.

GROSS: I'm sorry for dwelling so much on executions, but historically, it's so interesting in your book. I mean, there were other forms of execution. What were some of those forms and which was considered the worst, the most horrible of all deaths?

MANTEL: Well, beheading, believe it or not, was a privilege reserved usually for the aristocracy, for gentlemen and gentlewomen. Now, I don't want you to get the idea that these were weekly events in Henry's England. It's because beheadings were rare that they made such a terrible impact on the imagination of the close circle around Henry - his ministers, the aristocracy. Ordinary people who might be convicted of theft or a crime of violence were hanged.

I think there were two deaths that were more feared. One was to be hanged, drawn and quartered, which was the penalty for high treason. And the people in the book, when they were given a sentence of beheading, the men who were convicted with Anne Boleyn would have regarded that as a mercy, rather than the terribly painful and long-drawn-out death of being hanged, drawn and quartered. The other thing - if a woman was convicted of treason is she could be burned.

GROSS: You know, I was thinking if anyone ever needs an antidote to princess fantasies, they might want to read your books.

(LAUGHTER)

MANTEL: Yes.

GROSS: Women who were chosen as queen - that sounds really great, right? But if they don't give birth to a male heir for Henry VIII - bam, they're executed.

MANTEL: Well, no. I don't think it's as simple as that, in all fairness.

GROSS: Oh, OK.

MANTEL: He didn't execute Anne - he didn't execute his first wife for failing to give birth to a male heir. He divorced her. He didn't execute Anne for that reason, but Anne had become a political liability, a diplomatic liability. And Henry did believe, rightly or wrongly, that there was a plot against him, a plot to kill him, and that Anne was implicated. It sounds unlikely. It sounds far-fetched, but the court was - I won't say happy, but they were able to go along with it. It wouldn't be - let's be fair even to Henry. There was no crime of failing to bear the king a son. There was a crime of treason. Anne was convicted of treason.

GROSS: What - in doing so much research for your books about Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII, what are some of the things you learned about what it meant to be a woman then, even a woman who becomes queen?

MANTEL: I think it's a great mistake to regard these women as victims, certainly Catherine of Aragon, Henry's first wife, and Anne Boleyn. They were superbly educated women. They were strong-minded, strong characters, strong wills, and they were clever. And they were political players. The title of queen of England could bring a lot of unofficial power with it. I think that when you move away from the vigor of the queen, then women are able to exercise much less real power. But one of the attractions of writing about this period is that you don't have to exaggerate the role of the women in your book. You don't have to give them an artificial, unhistorical boost in order to make them agents of their own fate. They really are strong. They really are involved. They're deeply drawn into the political process, and they're actors in it.

BIANCULLI: Hilary Mantel speaking to Terry Gross in 2012. An adaptation of her "Wolf Hall" novels, about intrigue in and around the court of King Henry VIII, is premiering this weekend on the PBS series "Masterpiece." It's a six-part miniseries. More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

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BIANCULLI: This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli, in for Terry Gross, back with more of Terry's 2012 interview with Hilary Mantel. She's the author of the best-selling historical novels "Wolf Hall" and "Bring Up The Bodies," which are the basis of an imported "Wolf Hall" TV production premiering Sunday on the PBS series "Masterpiece" as well as a stage production opening next week on Broadway. Each of Mantel's books won Britain's top literary honor, the Man Booker Prize. Both are set in 16th century England during the reign of King Henry VIII and told from the point of view of the king's chief minister, Thomas Cromwell. "Wolf Hall," the first novel in Mantel's projected trilogy, describes how King Henry broke away from the Roman Catholic Church so he could divorce his wife Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn.

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GROSS: Of all the historical stories that you could tell in historical fiction, why did you choose the stories of Cromwell, Henry VIII and Henry VIII's wives?

MANTEL: The three books really are about Cromwell. They center around him. They're seen through his eyes. What Cromwell doesn't know, by and large, the reader doesn't know, that is, at least when you're within the framework of the narrative. Obviously, you bring your historical knowledge to it. But Cromwell is the primary figure here. And this is a great untold story - or at least it wasn't told until now - is all the fiction and all the drama we have about Henry VIII's reign. And the figure of Cromwell is somehow marginal or missing, and yet, he was central. And historians know that, but it just hadn't percolated through to fictionalized narratives.

He's the minister of everything. He's Henry's right hand, and he's powerful for almost 10 years. So he's the man who knows every - how everything works. But strangely, because he has been left out of the popular narrative, when you look through Cromwell's eyes, this material, which seems so very familiar to us, becomes unfamiliar. You have a different angle. But everything in the book - Anne, Queen Catherine, Henry - they're all seen from Cromwell's point of view. So this is not a neutral portrayal. It's not an overview. It's very angled.

GROSS: Why do you write historical fiction? And I know you haven't exclusively written that, but you're certainly best known for that.

MANTEL: Since I was a very small child, I've had a kind of reverence for the past, and I felt a very intimate connection with it. When I began, it was just being enthralled by the lives of the members of my family who - really, it didn't seem to make any difference in day-to-day talk whether people were alive or dead. I'm one of these children who grew up at the knee of my grandmother and her elder sister, listening to very old people talk about their memories. And as I say, in their conversation, everything was as if it happened yesterday. And the dead were discussed along with the living. And the difference really didn't seem to matter. And I suppose this seeped into my viewpoint. Instead of thinking there was a wall between the living and the dead, I thought there was a very thin veil. It was almost as if they'd just gone into the next room.

GROSS: Now, there are certain, like, inherent problems with historic fiction, which is - well, like, for the reader, unless you really know your history, you never know if what you're reading is the novel is taking liberty or, you know, the best interpretation of history that we have. So you know, that line between fact and fiction is often blurred in historic fiction. What guides you about that line between fact and fiction when you're writing?

MANTEL: It's quite simple, really. I make up as little as possible. I spend a great deal of time on research, on finding all the available accounts of a scene or incident, finding out all the background details and the biographies of the people involved there, and I try to run up all the accounts side by side to see where the contradictions are and to look where things have gone missing. And it's really in the gap - it's in the erasures - that I think the novelist can best go to work because inevitably in history in any period, we know a lot about what happened, but we may be far hazier on why it happened. And there's always the question, why did it happen the way it did? Where was the turning point? Every scene I go into, I'm looking for these contradictions, antagonisms, turning points, and I'm trying to find out the dramatic structure of history, if you like.

GROSS: So Henry VIII breaks off from the Roman Catholic Church, starts the Church of England. Parliament makes Henry the head of the church, but Cromwell's really running the church. So outside - you know, Henry breaks away from the Roman Catholic Church in order to divorce his wife. Outside of changing, you know, the rule about divorce, are there other changes that Henry and Cromwell make in the Church of England?

MANTEL: Well, I think Henry's divorce is really only one part of it if you think of the enormous advantages that the break from Rome brought to England because it meant, basically, for Henry that he could lay his hands on the church's assets. So it wasn't simply a question of getting rid of his first wife. It was a question, as he saw it, of taking ownership of what really should be his anyway.

You see, what you had in England before the Reformation were essentially two jurisdictions running side by side - the English jurisdiction and the Roman jurisdiction. Now, this is a time of the formation of a nation. Cromwell certainly is intent on an independent England, a country that runs her own affairs and runs them in the English language by and large, not in Latin, and has the Bible in English. That was his great crusade.

The law on divorce didn't change. There was actually no such thing as a divorce. There was only an annulment, a declaration that a marriage had never been lawful in the first place. This is what Henry sought. We call it the divorce. We use the words interchangeably. But when he wanted to get rid of Catherine and marry again, he sought from Rome a declaration that that marriage had been invalid at the outset. So 20 years were wiped away.

Now, when Rome wouldn't give him that annulment, then there was a big rethink. And it was the precipitating cause, but not the sole cause of the break with Rome. Henry then had his new archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer. And the decision had been taken back from Rome to England, so Henry was granted his divorce, his annulment, under the new English jurisdiction.

GROSS: So is the Bible translated from Latin into English during the period of Henry VIII and, in part, as a result of Henry VIII?

MANTEL: Yes, it is. And this is a great turning point. In 1538, a time which will be covered in my third book, Cromwell actually gets Henry's blessing for the English Bible to be placed in every parish church. This is for the first time. There had been English Bibles a few years before, but they were not licensed by the king. Their status was unofficial. But Cromwell actually managed to get, eventually, Henry's commitment to the Scriptures in English. And the decree was that anyone who could read could come up and read that Bible. So it's a great turning point because it's giving what people thought of as the word of God to the people in their own language.

GROSS: And without having to go through a priest. You could...

MANTEL: Yeah, yeah.

GROSS: It was accessible to you directly.

MANTEL: You don't have to ask the priest what it means. If you can read, you can read it in your own language. And if you can't read, someone else can read it out to you. It puts the responsibility for your salvation in your hands. Your relationship with God changes. You don't have to go through an intermediary. It's - as it were, you've got a direct line.

GROSS: You grew up Roman Catholic in England. Did it make a difference to be Roman Catholic as opposed to Anglican?

MANTEL: It does make a difference to me because the way I was brought up was with a very superstitious Catholicism. The faith was taught to me very badly, so I was pretty much in the position of a medieval peasant, I think.

GROSS: (Laughter).

MANTEL: So it's not very difficult for me to understand pre-Reformation religion because essentially, it's what I was taught. And there is some advantage in knowing that older world. You know, when I was a little kid, we still interned at the Latin mass every week.

BIANCULLI: Hilary Mantel, author of the "Wolf Hall" books, speaking to Terry Gross in 2012. More after a break, this is FRESH AIR.

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BIANCULLI: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to Terry's 2012 interview with author Hilary Mantel. Her "Wolf Hall" books have been made into a TV miniseries, premiering this weekend on PBS "Masterpiece" and also are the basis for a hit British play, now imported and in previews on Broadway.

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GROSS: So I just wanted to ask you a little bit about your health. I know you've had a debilitating condition for a few decades now, endometriosis, and - which has been a pretty systemic problem for you. Would you just explain a little bit what the condition is?

MANTEL: Yes. Endometriosis is a condition in which the special cells that line the womb - they are the endometrium. They should be in your womb, but in endometriosis, these special cells are found in other parts of the body, typically through the pelvis, but they can be anywhere in the body. And the problem there is they bleed each month, just as the lining of the womb does. Then they scar over, and depending how much space there is around the scar tissue, you can have terrific pain, disability. It's a disease that throws up a variety of symptoms, including nausea. It's not easy to diagnose because, depending where the endometrial deposits are, the symptoms can be quite different.

It's an unrecognized problem among teenage girls, and it's something that every young woman who has painful menstruation should be aware of. You've got to ask yourself, you know, could this be endometriosis? Because it's a condition that is curable if it's caught early. If not, if it's allowed to run on, it can cause infertility and it can really, really mess up your life. I suffered from it, I think, since I was 11 years old. It wasn't diagnosed. I kept getting sent away and told that it was all in my mind. When I was 27, the whole thing came to a crisis and I had surgery - big surgery. I lost my fertility. I didn't have any children. I don't know whether I would've been able to have children. Unfortunately, that surgery didn't cure the condition. It came back, and I lived with it for the next 20 years. It's now died back; it's quiescent, but it's done a lot of damage to my body in the meanwhile, mainly because of the scar tissue laid down. In 2010, between writing "Wolf Hall" and writing "Bring Up The Bodies," I had two operations. And I was out of things for six, almost nine months. I'm hoping - I'm hoping - this will be the end of it.

GROSS: So correct me if I'm wrong here, but because of the steroids that you were on to help...

MANTEL: Yeah.

GROSS: ...With your condition and I think because of a thyroid condition as well, your weight just about doubled. And...

MANTEL: Yeah.

GROSS: ...You ended up with a completely different body...

MANTEL: That's right...

GROSS: ...Than the one...

MANTEL: ...Yes.

GROSS: ...That you used to have. How did that change the sense of who you are?

MANTEL: Well, I lived my life as a skinny, little thing, and that's the body type in my family. And, you know, I thought I'd get old, but I never thought I'd get fat. And I was given a particular drug - and I'm going back 20 years now - where my weight just went crazy. And I had to - my size changed every week. And I ended up, as you say, doubling my body weight. And a lot of that gain took place over a very short period of about nine months, so I didn't recognize myself, and I still have trouble. When I see myself in dreams, now I'm a fat woman. But for the first 20 years, I should say, I saw myself as I used to be. And then I'd wake up, and I'd think, who is this? What is all this flesh?

GROSS: Well, it must've created a strange relationship to your body because your body was already in pain from the endometriosis, but then it was like physically transformed. You didn't even recognize it. And to be - to have a body, to be in a body - however you want to see your body - and not - not feel like it's really yours must be a very, you know, estranging position to be in. You want to feel united with your body, not like it's this alien thing that you ended up in.

MANTEL: Yes, that's right. And the pity of it was that the drug in question didn't do anything for me at all. It didn't do anything to help the pain or cure the endometriosis or even stop it in its tracks. It was a complete misfire, medically speaking. But, you know, I well remember going to see the doctor who prescribed the drug for me when I put on the first couple of stones and telling her what was happening, and she said, oh, well, now you know what it's like for the rest of us. And...

GROSS: Oh, that's helpful (laughter).

MANTEL: Yeah, unhelpful. And yeah, it was a strange process. It's very difficult for me not to regard my body as my enemy, but it's the only one I've got.

BIANCULLI: Hilary Mantel, author of the "Wolf Hall," speaking to Terry Gross in 2012. More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

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BIANCULLI: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to Terry's 2012 interview with author Hilary Mantel. Her "Wolf Hall" books have been made into a TV miniseries premiering this weekend on PBS "Masterpiece" and also are the basis of a hit British play now imported and in previews on Broadway.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)

GROSS: So I'm thinking there was a period of a few years when you lived in Saudi Arabia.

MANTEL: Yes.

GROSS: Your husband is a geologist and he was working there. And of course, there were so many restrictions on your life. You couldn't drive. You could barely leave your house unless you were escorted by your husband or another man. And I'm thinking you probably already had gained the weight, so you were in a new body in a country that basically granted you no rights. That must have been such a really strange and alienating period for you.

MANTEL: Yes, it was. I went out to Saudi Arabia when I was still taking this drug and partway through this strange weight gain. And, as you say, out there you dress in drapery rather than clothes.

GROSS: (Laughter).

MANTEL: So perhaps if it was going to happen that was the best time for it to happen, but I take your point. It is very strange. I lived in a block of four flats. My neighbors were - they were not all Saudis, but they were Muslims. Upstairs from me was a young Saudi couple. The wife was about 19. She had a baby. We saw each other most days. We'd have coffee and a chat and she was a student at the women's university and I'd help her with her work. But of course, I was never introduced to her husband. And if we happened to pass in the common hallway then his reaction was to look straight through me and at the wall as if I was invisible for all my newly gained flesh. And by doing this he was showing his respect for me. Now, you have to work hard to get your head around that; that making someone invisible is a form of respect. I wasn't wearing a black veil, but he was dropping one over me. Then you go to the shops. You go, let's say, into the drugstore. You'd ask for a packet of aspirin, and the man wouldn't talk to you. And he'd look over your shoulder and your husband would say can she have a package of aspirin, please? And he'd say yes, sir (laughter).

GROSS: Was it hard after getting back to England from your years in Saudi Arabia to be an empowered person again?

MANTEL: Well, you know, I used to come back every summer, so my life fell into two parts - a woman who ran her own life in Britain and a woman who, in Saudi Arabia, simply didn't have a life to run. And sometimes when I was in Saudi Arabia I used to take out the evidence of my other life. I used to read the stubs on my checkbook thinking yes, there was a time when I could pay for my own aspirin or whatever. And I think it would've been very difficult to live there the year-round without - without relief. But it was while we were living in Saudi Arabia that my first book was accepted. And so I needed to be back the following summer for quite a while to steer that through the publication process. Then we returned to England just at the point where my second book was about to come out.

GROSS: So here you were in a very, like, religious country, a religion that doesn't grant many rights to women. You had left your religion by the time you were 12. You basically gave up the church at that age.

MANTEL: Yes.

GROSS: Why?

MANTEL: I no longer have faith. I lost my belief in a deity, not just in Catholicism, but in the whole thing.

GROSS: Did you miss that presence?

MANTEL: No, I don't - I don't think I missed it, not at that time in my life. Other things came in to fill the gap.

GROSS: And do you still feel the same way that...

MANTEL: No, I don't feel the same way now. I - I know - I envy people who have faith, and I think it's possible I may regain it, although I would not go back to the Catholic Church.

GROSS: Where would you go do you think?

MANTEL: To the Church of England, as founded by Henry VIII.

GROSS: Really?

(LAUGHTER)

MANTEL: Well, it's a very broad church.

GROSS: That - don't you almost feel like you created it? Do you know what I mean? Because, like, in writing all these books, like, these figures are, like, in some way your creation. It is part fiction. So don't you - yeah?

MANTEL: I think that it's true in the sense that I have come to have great admiration for men like Thomas Cranmer, who were among the founders of the Church of England. And there is a certain amount of personal inspiration there.

GROSS: Well, Hilary Mantel, congratulations on your books and the Man Booker Prizes and thank you so very much for talking with us.

MANTEL: Thank you very much.

BIANCULLI: Hilary Mantel speaking to Terry Gross in 2012. An adaptation of her "Wolf Hall" novels about intrigue in and around the court of King Henry VIII premieres this weekend on PBS on the series "Masterpiece."

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BIANCULLI: On the next FRESH AIR, our guest is composer Philip Glass. When he first started performing his music, it was so different and new that sometimes audiences would get angry - so angry they'd throw things.

PHILIP GLASS: If they threw apples and oranges, that wasn't so great. But if they threw an egg, it isn't so bad 'cause the eggs would just break.

GROSS: (Laughter).

BIANCULLI: He's our guest on the next FRESH AIR. Join us. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.