Hilary Mantel: 'I'm reading How to Write Like Tolstoy - I live in hope'
The award-winning novelist gives her favourite cultural picks
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Books
I’m reading in manuscript a book to be published next spring, Richard Cohen’s How to Write Like Tolstoy; I live in hope. Meanwhile, I’m dwelling On Silbury Hill with novelist and poet Adam Thorpe. And brooding over The Pirotechnia, by Vannoccio Biringuccio, first published in Venice in 1540. It’s a work on metallurgy. I need to discover what a 16th-century blacksmith knew about his craft.
Music
The new Tom Petty, Hypnotic Eye. Which means time to re-listen to early releases, and finds me careering recklessly ahead, into 1976.
Films
Stacked up are films I missed, including The Wolf of Wall Street. And Blue Jasmine: whether I admire it or not, I can rejoin those greying, head-shaking bores who drone on about Woody Allen’s career highs and lows.
Visual Arts
Daily e-mail images supply my own private exhibition, courtesy of photographer George Miles. His witty and mysterious pictures skewer the dark heart of kitsch, precisely locate the strangeness within the banal, see into the deep layers of landscape and nudge everyday objects towards sinister and plural meanings.
Before this, paintings have helped me write, but George Miles appears to be photographing the inside of my head.
Hilary Mantel joins Harriet Walter in a talk, To Tell the Truth, about getting to grips with a character, Union Chapel, London N1 (rslit.org) 11 September
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments