We do not kill so many in Calais, but one goes to other towns. One must handle the weapon, if only to go through the motions. He whirls like a dancer on the spot, his arms held high, his fists together as if he were gripping the sword every day. Once practices like this, the executioner says. It's almost 4 foot in length, 2 inches broad, round at the tip, a double edge. (Reading) The weapon is heavy, needing a two-handed grip. So we have Cromwell, we have the French executioner, and we have Christophe, a young ruffian who is a servant to Cromwell. Henry has sent for the executioner from Calais to behead his wife with the sword, rather than the customary axe, in the hope it will give her a quicker death. MANTEL: Well, we, first of all, have Thomas Cromwell, who is Henry's chief minister and the organizer of the plot to bring down Anne Boleyn.

So before you read this passage, I'd like you to just explain what's happening and who is speaking in this passage that you're going to read. The first book ends with an execution and so does the second. And there are many executions in your books (laughter). GROSS: So I'd love to start from a reading - with a reading from the new book, 'Bring Up The Bodies.' And this is toward the very end of the book when Anne Boleyn is getting executed. TERRY GROSS: Hilary Mantel, welcome to FRESH AIR, and congratulations on your second Man Booker Prize. Terry spoke with Hilary Mantel in 2012, after 'Bring Up The Bodies' had won the Booker Prize.

In fact, her beheading ends Mantel's novel, 'Bring Up the Bodies.' But if you remember your history, you'll recall that things didn't go so well for Anne Boleyn. That's when the Church of England broke away from the Catholic Church, allowing Henry VIII to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon and mary Anne Boleyn. Cromwell helped bring about the English Reformation. But Cromwell, like many others around Henry VIII, fell into disfavor with the king and was beheaded.

Mantel's trilogy chronicles Thomas Cromwell's improbable rise as the son of a blacksmith to become one of the most powerful men of his time in 16th-century England. Mantel wrote 14 other books, including the memoir 'Giving Up The Ghost,' in which she describes her long struggle with a debilitating form of endometriosis. She was the first woman to win the Booker Prize twice for the first two of her Cromwell books, 'Wolf Hall' and 'Bring Up the Bodies.' The third novel, 'The Mirror And The Light,' was published in 2020 and was longlisted for the same prize. Mantel was best known for her trilogy of novels about Thomas Cromwell, the political fixer for Henry VIII. Today we remember writer Hilary Mantel, who died last week at the age of 70. I'm Sam Briger, sitting in for Terry Gross.

Bring up the bodies author