Why historians hate me, by Wolf Hall Hilary
DAME Hilary Mantel says historians see historical novelists as ‘parasites’ who steal their readers and mislead the public.
The bestselling author, who won the Booker Prize for both Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies, made her comments after being asked why some historians dislike historical fiction.
‘Perhaps they think we are parasites and that we steal their sales,’ she told the BBC’s History Magazine. ‘To be fair, I think historians worry about the prospect of the public being misled.
‘And if a novelist is giving factual information, I think she shares the historian’s obligation to be accurate, to be up to date with research…’
Dame Hilary, 64, whose novels depicting the rise of Thomas Cromwell were made into a BBC TV series, added: ‘But readers know what they’re doing when they pick up a novel. They don’t blunder into fiction by accident.’