Hilary Mantel started writing historical fiction in 1977 on the jacaranda-shaded verandah of a detached bungalow in Lobatse, Botswana, just over the border from apartheid South Africa. Across the road was a boarding school where, when not crippled by an illness no doctor had been able to diagnose, she taught Shakespeare to pupils who had never seen a play. In the evenings, she wrote.
She was…
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