Mantel makes history
with Booker prize win

The 60-year-old writer, who won in 2009 for the first part of her historical trilogy, Wolf Hall, was named winner at a ceremony in central London last night.

Accepting her prize she said: “Well I don’t know, you wait 20 years for a Booker Prize and two come along at once.”

She added that she regarded the award as an “act of faith and a vote of confidence”.

Sir Peter Stothard, who chaired the judging panel, said the book, the second part of Mantel’s trilogy on the life of Thomas Cromwell, “utterly surpassed” the firs.

He said: “She uses her art, her power of prose, to create moral ambiguity and the real uncertainty of political life, political life then and the pale imitation of political life now.”

Mantel received a cheque for £50,000 after seeing off competition from the hotly-tipped favourite Will Self’s Umbrella.