Mark Lawson

Thursday

Mark Lawson

Lockdown, and the hardships ahead

From our UK edition

31 min listen

It’s the first few days of a national lockdown, so have humans been hubristic in not expecting something like this to happen (1:10)? Over in France, is President Macron dealing with this any better (11:05)? Last, is there any point in being a historical novelist in the age of Hilary Mantel (19:10)?

Saturday

Mark Lawson

Knowing Cromwell’s fate only increases the tension: Mantel reviewed

From our UK edition

When the judges for the 1992 Booker Prize received Hilary Mantel’s A Place of Greater Safety, an 800-page novel set during the French Revolution seemed a quirky diversion from the work of a novelist then most associated with shortish dark comedies of contemporary or recent life, such as Fludd (1989), featuring a weird Catholic priest,