Polari‘s What We’re Reading feature recently included Bring Up The Bodies by Hilary Mantel. Macmillian Audio provided a clip from the book so readers can get a multimedia insight into this popular, and critically well received novel. Along with Wolf Hall, it is going to be adapted into a series by the BBC.

Bring Up The Bodies audio clip:

Michael Langan – Bring Up The Bodies by Hilary Mantel

I was worried that the follow-up to Mantel’s Booker Prize-winning Wolf Hall wouldn’t match that book’s brilliance, but Mantel has once again taken a story that we all think we know and made it read as if it’s happening before your very eyes. This second volume of her trilogy exploring the life of Thomas Cromwell, one of the key players in the Tudor court, takes us up to the execution of Ann Boleyn and she may well do the Booker double. Mantel transcends the historical genre with her masterful story telling, while the depth and subtlety of characterisation are breathtaking and, line for line, her prose writing is peerless. I, for one, can’t wait for volume three – The Mirror and the Light – due out next year.