What Hilary Mantel Did For Me, in a Year of Wolf Hall

Never Forget that Words Can Change Your Life

Dec 06, 2024

Author’s photo at a filming location for “The Mirror and the Light”, January 2024

It is almost a year since I brought a small list of newsletter subscribers to Substack and began writing here. It was an impulsive decision, and I didn’t have a plan. My first post was a roundup of 2023. My second was some thoughts about writing. But January is the anniversary of my brother’s death, plus my “biological birthday” (my official birthday is in June now; fewer traumatic memories, better weather). January is a month when my past tends to haunt me. And this January, the Ghost of January Past scared out of me the first buds of some powerful fruit.

My year has been book-ended by Wolf Hall. Here in the UK, those of us who love quality historical drama await the final episodes of Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light, Peter Kominsky and Peter Straughan’s beautiful screen version of Hilary Mantel’s final novel. The series will finish on December 15th. But my year — and in a very real way, the trajectory of my writing on Substack — also began with it.

I am blessed to know one of the actors in this series. In January, I had the huge privilege of spending a day with him on set. There is so much one could say about the extraordinary business of filming, not least how many people it takes and the operational complexity. I had the most amazing day, the kind that makes you marvel at where your life has led you, and at the creative ingenuity of human beings. The scenes I watched being filmed will be in this Sunday’s episode and I’m excited to see them, knowing how they developed, including the director incorporating a change suggested by Damian Lewis (Henry VIII).

Between takes, my actor friend and I talked about those aspects of the creative process that are common to both acting and writing, in a conversation recounted here. He asked me if I, too, drew on my personal history to bring these fictions to life, and I told him how I had tapped into my experience of domestic abuse when writing a section of the novel I had just begun revising.

In the previous fifteen years, I’d done a lot of work on my feelings towards my ex-husband. I had even found genuine reasons to feel gratitude for the spiritual growth resulting from that rather horrific co-creation. But I had missed something crucial, something I hadn’t registered until I saw the tears on my friend’s face. I hadn’t fully processed my trauma. I’d made neat verbal summaries to explain my past to friends, but I’d avoided the scary stuff. And outside of fiction and a couple of poems, I hadn’t written about it.

On the frosty four-hour drive home that evening, everything started malfunctioning. First technology, then me. Google Maps couldn’t locate me at all in the country lanes of Dorset; the signal was too poor. I found I was driving blind, following signposts to places that I couldn’t connect with compass points. I had no idea whether I was heading home or lengthening my journey. It was late. I was tired. Panic began to rise.

I put my husband on speaker phone to see if he could help locate me through village names and B road numbers. The line kept dropping, and soon, I was sobbing. My emotional response was way out of proportion, and I knew it. The earlier conversation, my friend’s tears for what I went through, had dug up some huge buried feelings of fear.

Eventually, the signal improved, and my satnav kicked in. But twice more on the journey home, the same thing happened. Both times my guidance became useless as I hit unexpected motorway closures which the satnav kept trying to send me back to, and panic rose so fast that I couldn’t connect to any source of wisdom. Could barely process my husband’s instructions, which seemed, in any case, to be lagging a few minutes behind where I actually was. “Turn right at the next roundabout,” he’d say, about a roundabout I’d already gone straight over. I needed to stop, yet the very idea brought more panic. I was desperate to find my route home. It wasn’t 2024 after all. It was 1998.

When I journalled the next morning, the symbolism was clear. What I wrote can be distilled in three lines. The fear that you experienced then is still crouched inside you. It can ambush you on country lanes and motorways. It can lengthen and complicate your route to home.

I started the daily work to clear my fear of threatening men. The one who made it clear he wanted me dead. The men his actions set upon me, who followed me into the park, and to the beach; who tampered with my car. The one who drugged and assaulted me. The death threat that had never been revoked.

As my fear cleared, words became possible. That Friday, I wrote a social media post about the birthday in 1998, where I found myself standing at a high hotel window, calculating whether the drop was enough to kill me. I expanded it into a Substack post, Calculating the Drop.

Since then, I have pulled many sticky strands of memoir into the light. Some, seeing them, have glimpsed their own lives in the mirror. The Mirror and the Light. Fitting to the theme of my year.

It is true for each of us that our experiences reflect back to us our own lit rooms and the ones we’ve left snuffed out, still harbouring a dark that might — if we lose our way even a little — swallow us. None of our experiences are “random” when we ask them what emotional tremors they carry. We are called, over and over again, to do the work, the better to bring ourselves home.

Who needs to read this post?

The Mirror and the Light was the book Hilary Mantel was writing when we had a brief correspondence in 2011. No doubt hundreds of people can say the same, as she wrestled with the book for many years. Hard, no doubt, to create a third and final instalment when the first two have received the ultimate literary accolade. Hard also when your fame brings a tidal wave of total strangers asking for your time.

I was one of those strangers. She was extraordinarily generous and gracious in her responses. Maybe it helped that I had been a fan of her writing long before Wolf Hall arrived and could highlight things I loved about earlier works, too. She was, in many ways, my model: someone who wrote both historical and speculative fiction, was interested in the non-physical realities, and never sat in a neat little box suited to the publishing world’s expectations. She simply kept following her passions until the world took notice.

I have never before published our correspondence. But now that she, too, dwells in the non-physical realm, I have a sense she wouldn’t mind. It feels right to do it now, looking back at a year of writing whose whole tone was cast on the set of her fiction.

My Correspondence with Hilary Mantel

I don’t have the letter I originally wrote to her. It will be somewhere on the previous laptop, which is sitting dead in a drawer. I had submitted The Marlowe Papers to my longtime agent, who said she didn’t see the point in submitting it to a fiction publisher because it was in verse. Through the fortuitous intermediary of a former student who had become a successful historical novelist, I found a new and enthusiastic agent in Rupert Heath.1 While we waited for the 30-day exit clause from my previous one to expire, he pressed me to get quotes from established writers. Dream endorsement? Hilary Mantel. He had her address, so I sent a letter with a hardcopy print-out of the manuscript. Within days, I received this email.

Feb 15, 2011, 9.15pm

Dear Ros,
Thank you for your very kind letter, and for your MS. It is immensely clever, capacious, ingenious and imaginative. I find it difficult to explain why I am not the person to give you the full-hearted endorsement you seek. Perhaps it’s because I so much like Anthony Burgess’s Marlowe novel that my imagination hasn’t got room for another Kit. Perhaps it’s that conspiracy theories involving Shakespeare lack attraction for me. Or, most likely, it’s just because I’m so ensnared by my Wolf Hall sequel that I find it difficult to shake my thoughts free and do justice to someone else’s work, however good and original; for that reason, I’m not reviewing at the moment. Perhaps, after all, this is just not the form for me; I kept wanting the information in the end notes to be up front, and clearly, it couldn’t be. But it’s a good sign: that I wanted more, not less. I wanted the explanatory matter that only prose can provide. I hope that is not a philistine reaction to what is an extraordinary feat.
I see no reason why a novel in verse shouldn’t succeed, on the face of it. I think of Vikram Seth’s Golden Gate, which was very well-received. Perhaps those were less conservative times. I’m not sure. It’s always a golden age, looking back, but I remember the climate of the time: publishers moaning that there was no money, no readers, etc. I wish you good luck. If you should write a novel in prose, at some later date, I would very much like to read it.
I hope you won’t think me a dull pedant for pointing out that witches were not burned in England, but hanged. Women accused of witchcraft were sometimes burned for ‘petty treason’ –that is, killing their husbands; but not actually for witchcraft.
I will be thinking of you, and with admiration.
All best wishes, Hilary

I did not reply for over 36 hours. In shock, I imagine.

Feb 17, 2011, 1:15pm

Dear Hilary,
What a delight to find an e-mail from you in my inbox. It is a great honour to have a writer of your calibre thinking of me with admiration! I understand all the reasons you give for not being able to endorse The Marlowe Papers fully. Anthony Burgess's glorious novel was the chief reason why I tackled the subject in poetry rather than prose; in my view, the ultimate Marlowe fiction is already written in prose, and I could not better it. Indeed, I was hoping to avoid the comparison, but clearly that will not be possible! The other reason I wrote the novel in verse is because poetry is my first love, and having become somewhat addicted to iambic pentameter, I wanted the challenge of telling the story in the form that both Marlowe and Shakespeare made their own. But selling such a chimera will not be easy.
Thank you, anyway, for responding so quickly and gently. Despite your reservations, you said some very kind things. "It is immensely clever, capacious, ingenious and imaginative" made my heart sing! I wondered whether — completely understanding that you would not want to endorse the book to the reading public — you would nevertheless be willing to let me use this part of your response to help publishers get over their fear that the book (being a novel-in-verse) would not be well-received? With the proviso it would never go any further? If you would be happy for me to do that, it would mean a great deal to me, but I will respect whatever decision you make.
I appreciate your correcting me on the witches. I shudder to think how many other things I will have managed to get wrong in passing. When I read Wolf Hall I was astounded by your depth of understanding of the period, especially the small details, and here I am slipping up on something quite basic. That is the trouble with poetry and its throwaway references. The opening was written right at the beginning of the process, before I had completed my research, so that partially explains the slip-up. I know the odd heretic was burnt - Kett, for example - but hadn't even noticed I'd thrown in 'burning witches' until you pointed it out, as I was much more focused on the image of the heads on poles. So I'm grateful for your saving me one small embarrassment. I hope there won't be too many others.
I am so looking forward to the Wolf Hall sequel. I felt somewhat bereft when I reached the end of the book, especially knowing how everything was on the verge of changing for him. I would be hard-pressed to name a book I have liked more in the last few years, so a sequel will be extremely welcome. I shall disturb you no further!
With appreciation and thanks,
Ros

Hilary did not let me grow moss in her in-tray.

Feb 17, 2011, 7:18pm

Dear Ros,
I appreciate your very gallant response. By all means quote me; that doesn’t worry me at all, and I shall be delighted if it helps.
And don’t worry about the witches. The sainted Robert Darnton made the same mistake in the NYRB a couple of years back. I’m sure Wolf Hall is shot through with errors. Unless you live with a period for a lifetime I don’t see how they can be avoided.
Good luck!
Hilary

Less than a month later, on March 16th, I wrote to let her know I had accepted an offer from Sceptre and thanked her again. Yes, her words made a difference. They changed the course of my life.

Can words change yours?

Have words ever changed your life? I bet they have. You only have to ask yourself that question, and you’ll think of some. Did they change your life for the better? Or send you off in a difficult direction?

Most people live seemingly at the mercy of other people’s words, never, themselves, taking hold of the ultimate gift: becoming your own scriptwriter. This leads me to ask what words might do to change your life for the better. Formulating the right words. The clear words. Or getting out of your system the words that scarred you. The words you wish you’d said.

There is nothing at our disposal both so accessible and so powerful as words. Words curse us and heal us. Great insights are available to us if we explore the patterns of our lives through writing them; letting words lead us in an exploratory process to discover those darkened rooms we have hidden from ourselves and turn on the lights.

For over a quarter of a century, I have guided thousands in the process and craft of writing, in workshops and retreats and weekly university classes where there were marks to be had, certificates and degrees to earn. Alongside teaching creative writing and literature, I became a trauma therapist, qualifying as an Advanced Emotional Freedom Technique practitioner and running a regular group, as well as seeing clients one-to-one.

At the centre of this year, my stability and income — in the form of a job I loved — was stripped away from me. I know from experience that all change is ultimately for my benefit, even when it seems otherwise. I feel sure this space in my life has been cleared for me to put into practice some useful synthesis of my skills in service to others and I have been considering what shape that might take.

The shape all fell into place for me this week, and as a result, this Substack will have some fresh content in 2025. I will keep writing my Friday posts because I know they are appreciated! And I will also offer three therapeutic writing challenges for those who are looking to shift some of their debris. The first one begins on Tuesday 14th January. The theme is “Writing Home”.

If you have no interest in taking part in the healing challenge, skip to the end, click on the heart for a dose of happiness, and let me know your thoughts on the rest of this post!

Healing Challenge: Writing Home

There is perhaps nothing more fundamental to our security and sense of rootedness than home. In a long life, “home” means many things.

This healing challenge will be focused on writing the self. The detailed prompts, which we will explore together step by step, will be geared towards life-writing / memoir, as opposed to fiction or poetry, though of course, your writing might take the form of poetry, or indeed, fiction —how many first novels are thinly-veiled autobiographies?

The exercises I set, which can be done in your own time but with support from myself and the community, will be carefully structured around an exploratory therapeutic core where the act of creating words will lead to self-knowledge, healing, and growth.

‘Writing as therapy’ is often sneered at, and yet even the most professional of writers finds writing therapeutic. Writing the self with honesty and clarity will often produce art in any case: poems of great beauty, novels resonant with truth, and memoirs that sear, cauterise and heal.

Whatever pieces you produce, should you wish to publish them, I will be looking for guest posts. But your end goal needn’t be pieces for publication (even though the processes may lead to that. The fundamental end goal is to heal some of the wounds we carry in connection to that loaded word, “home”.

Because we want to write candidly, and share work in progress (always a very vulnerable activity), I will keep the space safe for participants, free from internet trolls, difficult family members and exes, by making the writing part of it accessible for paid members only.

You can join as a monthly subscriber if you are not one already and just do this one challenge. But if you think you might want to do all three next year, the best value option will be an annual subscription. I currently have this discounted at £48, but only until the end of the year. So if you want to jump on at this price, now is the time.

I’m excited about this new direction for my life, and I hope you are too. I will still, of course, be writing my own fiction in the hope that one day, perhaps even one day soon, an insightful editor will decide that I am the next Hilary Mantel! But alongside this, I hope I will be the catalyst that allows you to write more deeply into your truth.