A Memoir of My Former Self

A Life in Writing

By: Hilary Mantel

Narrated by: Anne Enright, Aurora Dawson Hunte, Ben Miles, Bill Hamilton, Jane Wymark, Lydia Leonard, Nicholas Pearson, Sarah Waters

Length: 15 hrs and 22 mins

Publisher's summary

A Memoir of My Former Self reveals the shape of Hilary Mantel's life in her own dazzling words, narrated by a prestigious cast of actors and notable literary figures connected to Hilary's work.

From her unique childhood to her all-consuming fascination with Thomas Cromwell that grew into the Wolf Hall Trilogy, Hilary Mantel had a celebrated career as a novelist. Alongside this, she long contributed to newspapers and journals, unspooling stories from her own life and illuminating the world as she found it. This strand of Hilary's writing was an integral part of how she thought of herself. 'Ink is a generative fluid,' she explains. 'If you don't mean your words to breed consequences, don't write at all.' A Memoir of My Former Self collects the finest of this writing over four decades.

Mantel's subjects are wide-ranging. She discusses nationalism and her own sense of belonging; our dream life flopping into our conscious life; the mythic legacy of Princess Diana; the many themes that feed into her novels—revolutionary France, psychics, Tudor England—and other novelists, from Jane Austen to V. S. Naipaul. She writes about her father and the man who replaced him; she writes fiercely and heartbreakingly about the battles with her health she endured as a young woman, and the stifling years she found herself living in Saudi Arabia. Here, too, is a selection of her film reviews—from When Harry Met Sally to RoboCop—and, published for the first time, her stunning Reith Lectures, which explore the process of art bringing history and the dead back to life.

Compelling, often very funny, always luminous, it is essential listening from one of our greatest writers.

Voiced by Ben Miles, Lydia Leonard and Aurora Dawson-Hunte; all of whom have featured in stage adaptions of Hilary's work. With contributions from actress Jane Wymark, narrator of Hilary's memoir Giving up the Ghost. Readings from authors Anne Enright; the first Laureate for Irish Fiction and winner of the 2007 Booker Prize, and Sarah Waters; British Book Award Author of the Year and two-time Booker Prize nominee. Joining the cast are Hilary's long-time literary agent Bill Hamilton and her publisher for nearly twenty years, Nicholas Pearson.

'A smart, deft, meticulous, thoughtful writer, with such a grasp of the dark and spidery corners of human nature'—Margaret Atwood

©2023 Hilary Mantel (P)2023 W. F. Howes Ltd

Inexorably sad slant because we know she is not with us.

Almost every story selected is a first class, tour de force by Mantel. Whether it is a review of a film or a description of how she writes her novels, the tone of the writing is so clear that it is a call to arms, to think and re-think. I’ve resolved to follow up on many of the media she writes about.
My dependence on the spoken word brings me to criticize almost all of the chosen readers who are not actors. Please. Don’t do this. Even if their written work is splendid, that does not make them accessible speakers. I can understand their need to pay homage but it does not work. Even one of my favorite authors way of speaking involves a ‘dropping away’ at the end of each sentence-which means we can’t hear it. Ms Wymark is perhaps over clear but I was so pleased to recognize her voice-and to hear her every word.