Hilary Mantel remembers winning the Booker Prize: ‘I said I’d spend the money on sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll’
Wolf Hall was published in April 2009, and as the year advanced, the wind filled its sails. I thought I had a good chance of winning, but I had been a judge myself and know the decision can hang on a word. It’s a long evening, and so much depends on it. I was keyed-up but calm, prepared to win or lose. I’d had plenty of practice at losing and keeping a smile on my face.
When the announcement came, everything happened very fast. Within a blink I had made my speech (prepared, of course) and was being interviewed live on stage, surrounded by technicians trying to get a line to America. I couldn’t hear America’s questions, and the broadcasters were upset and showed it. Down in the body of the hall, all my folk were hugging each other, but I was surrounded by sweating strangers shouting at me. I felt lonelier than I ever had in my life, sealed off as if behind a screen of glass.
Then I pulled out my useless earphones, stepped down into the melee, and all the rest began: three days of incessant talking. Sometimes I feel I’ve been talking ever since. But the prize was very good for me. It boosted my confidence as a writer and gave me financial security after some bad years. I said I’d spend the money on sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll. I can’t disclose too much, but ask yourself why I needed to win again three years later…
I didn’t expect to repeat the trick with Bring Up the Bodies. Only two other writers have ever won twice. It seemed to me as good a book as Wolf Hall, and very different, but would the judges think it different enough? I was feeling ill that night, and I thought, ‘If I lose, at least I can go home.’ My publishers, sitting around me, were so relaxed that one of them missed the swift and low-key announcement and asked, ‘Why is Hilary standing up?’ No grouchy technicians this time. I felt amazement and delight. My younger brother texted me: ‘Tonight, madam, you are Boudicca. The rest are Colchester.’
The main thing the prizes have given me is time, so I could help see the story into other media – stage and TV – and complete the trilogy, believing that readers would wait for me to get it right. I’ve hated the claims that I must be ‘blocked’ because book three wasn’t ready quickly. I have no experience of ‘block’, but I have experience of complexity, and believe in honouring it.
The expression, ‘It’s like Wolf Hall,’ has passed into the language, to describe political infighting. The old house itself, deep in rural Wiltshire, is swarming with archaeologists, and home to a flourishing new generation of the Seymour family. I feel as if I wakened a sleeping giant.
