A celebration of the Wolf Hall trilogy author Dame Hilary Mantel, who died aged 70 last year, is to take place at Southwark Cathedral next month.
Family, friends and colleagues of Mantel will gather in London on 20 April for the memorial event, which will include tributes and readings from the double Booker prize winner’s body of work.
“It was a terrible shock to lose Hilary so suddenly last autumn,” said Nicholas Pearson, Mantel’s editor. “The outpouring across the world of literature in the days that followed was a comfort. But now it is time to reflect and celebrate one of the greatest writing careers – a novelist, short story writer, reviewer, memoirist and journalist – a life dedicated to literature and those who practise it. There was no one quite like her.”
A limited number of tickets for members of the public wishing to attend the celebration will be made available on Eventbrite nearer the time. The service will begin at 2:30pm and the family have asked for donations to Scene and Heard, a charity of which Mantel was a patron that uses theatre to benefit children from the Somers Town area in Euston, instead of flowers.
Southwark Cathedral was chosen because it has links to Mantel’s books about the former Lord Privy Seal Thomas Cromwell. In 1539, when what is now the cathedral was an Augustinian priory, it was surrendered to Henry VIII, the year before Thomas Cromwell’s execution. Also near the cathedral is a plaque that commemorates the first bible printed in English, which was supervised by Cromwell.
