Desde que abrió quise hacerme con el libro, pero a veces las cosas pasan por un motivo, y entre que no había podido ir, y no me había dado tiempo, no lo he leído hasta esta semana. Ahora sé que es porque los libros nos escogen, una de las cientos de frases que he subrayado en el libro, porque tenemos que estar preparados para abrazar lo que el destino nos trae. Marlon James, who won the Booker Prize in 2015 with A Brief History of Seven Killings, tells me that he only had two books on his desk the entire time he was writing his most recent fantasy novel, Moon Witch, Spider King: Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Mantel’s Wolf Hall.

The third book has the high quality of the previous 2, so will be a very strong contender in this years prizes. Cromwell’s ending may be common knowledge, but Mantel still managed to maintain both her readers’ and the critics’ enthusiasm for his story over a period of 11 years. I actually got chills when I saw the billboard in Leicester Square with the Tudor Rose and the words ‘So now get up.’ I was so excited to get my hands on The Mirror and the Light after 8 years of waiting! Wolf Hall series one is available to watch on BBC iPlayer in the UK and on the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel in the US and is available from Banijay Rights. Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light will begin filming across the UK soon. Further information will be announced in due course. The writing sparkles. "...the air as damp as if the afternoon had been rubbed with snails." Much earlier in the series, Princess Mary is described as having a face like a thumbnail. Her personality suits her appearance, small, fragile, and inexpressive. Once she's been fed, she gains her strength and gets mean.

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And then, of course, there was the Booker Prize win, although the judges were split. BBC broadcaster Jim Naughtie, who chaired the 2009 judging panel, said: ‘Our decision was based on the sheer bigness of the book, the boldness of its narrative and scene-setting, the gleam that there is in its detail.’

In theory, the rules of the game he’s playing should have meant that Cromwell couldn’t reach those heights – just as, a generation earlier, the Tudors should never have won the crown - but, moment by moment, Mantel shows us what it’s like to stake everything on shaping a future that no one, not even the most brilliant mind in the room, can see,’ she continues. ‘Writing history always requires imagination: working out what sources don’t say, as well as what they do (or might, or could) – filling in gaps where pieces of the puzzle are missing. Entre una habitación de hospital y una librería de ensueño, llamada JO, discurre la vida de una mujer, Carolina, que, a punto de alcanzar la cuarentena, se encuentra en una auténtica encrucijada: sus padres, alrededor de los cuales gravita su vida entera, han sufrido un terrible accidente. Su padre ha fallecido y su madre, consciente pero sin habla, se recupera en una clínica. This audiobook is one of those rare delights. All three books in the trilogy, expertly narrated with a separate additional listening guide. It took a while to hit her stride. She was drawn to historical fiction from the start, but, as she said in her 2017 Reith Lectures, ‘I was subject to a cultural cringe. I felt I was morally inferior to historians and artistically inferior to real novelists, who could do plots.’ In the mid-Seventies she wrote a novel about the French Revolution, but was unable to find publisher to take it on. At the time, historical fiction, she said later, ‘wasn’t respected or respectable’. One agent turned it down, she said, because they expected that it was ‘bound to be about ladies with high hair’. (The book, A Place of Greater Safety, was eventually published in 1992.) That said, sometimes it’s equally enjoyable to delve right into a certain story and get to know its characters inside out over multiple books. For that reason, a good book series is a must-have on the shelf of any bookworm.The sale of customised goods or perishable goods, sealed audio or video recordings, or software, which has been opened. It almost felt there was nothing new to say about the period. And, for a long time, there wasn’t. Then, in 2009, Hilary Mantel published Wolf Hall, the first volume of a trilogy set in the 1500s. But instead of treading well-worn ground – Henry VIII’s shenanigans and the sad yet ultimately one-dimensional stories of his six spouses – Mantel offered something new: an intricate look at the extraordinary rise of Thomas Cromwell, from boy soldier to one of Henry’s most trusted advisors. But Mantel wasn’t just telling Cromwell’s life story, she was humanising him, inviting us to see the world through him. (‘In fiction you’re exploring the unconscious of history,’ she said a few years ago.) Crucially, by writing in the present tense, she was presenting him as a man who has no idea what’s coming next, even though the reader knows exactly how events are going to play out. Mantel thus creates suspense in a story that in theory should contain very little. The first, Wolf Hall, was the best. I could not put any of them down, though. Got the first two from the library; had to actually buy the third (The Mirror and the Light) when the library's HOLD list would have meant a wait of . . . months at least. King Henry is lonely but arrogant. He bemoans that he and Thomas Cromwell were never able to go on a friendly outing together to meet the iron masters to see how they crafted weapons. Thomas consoles him by saying they should just imagine how it could have happened. "Let us say the ironmasters gave us their best welcome, and opened their minds to us, and showed us all their secrets." "They must have, ' Henry says. 'No one could keep secrets from me. It is no use to try'".

The inevitable question remains: how long can anyone survive under Henry’s cruel and capricious gaze? And oh yes – because the first two books have both individually won the Booker Prize. Of course what we ultimately want from the final book is a satisfying conclusion to the trilogy but it is hard not to get a teensy bit excited about the fact that she could win the Booker again. But more about that later – the book hasn’t even been released yet!

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This is not intended to be a full statement of all your rights under the Distance Selling Regulations. Full details of your rights under the Distance Selling Regulations are available in the UK from your local Citizens' Advice Bureau or your Local Authority's Trading Standards Office. I found this trilogy utterly engrossing, so much so that I binged it. Reading it took one full month, almost to the day. Applicability of cancellation rights: Legal rights of cancellation under the Distance Selling Regulations available for UK or EU consumers do not apply to certain products and services. The trilogy consists of three historical political novels set during the reign of Henry VIII and his chief minister Thomas Cromwell. I have just finished the last one, The Mirror and the Light, and even the ending is not disappointing. Of course, you know what's going to happen to the main character from the onset, but it's still riveting.