Dame Hilary Mantel: Wolf Hall author and Booker Prize winner dies at age of 70

4th Estate Books said: “We are heartbroken at the death of our beloved author, Dame Hilary Mantel, and our thoughts are with her friends and family, especially her husband, Gerald. This is a devastating loss and we can only be grateful she left us with such a magnificent body of work.”

Mantel grew up in Derbyshire and studied law at the University of Sheffield in the 1970s. Although her first book was published in 1985, she became a well-known literary figure after the 2009 release of Wolf Hall, the first in her trilogy about the life of Thomas Cromwell which later became an acclaimed TV drama.

She married her husband Gerald McEwen, a geologist, in 1973 and they lived in Devon.

Mantel suffered health problems as a young woman and was later diagnosed with a severe form of endometriosis which left her unable to have children.

Her cause of death has not been given.