Costa Book of the Year 2012

Bring Up the Bodies, the winner of the 2012 Man Booker Prize, has been named the 2012 Costa Book of the Year. Hilary Mantel has become the first author to win both awards in the same year. Bring Up the Bodies is the second part of a trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, chief minister to Henry VIII and concentrates on the three weeks in which Henry's second wife, Anne Boleyn, is arrested, tried and executed for treason. Wolf Hall, the first book, which won the 2009 Man Booker Prize, tells the story of Cromwell's rise to prominence in the Tudor court. Mantel is currently working on the final book in the trilogy to be called The Mirror and the Light. This novel will follow Thomas Cromwell from the heights of his power to his fall and execution in the summer of 1540. The Man Booker Committee described Bring up the Bodies, which has sold over 240,000 hardback copies already, as “One of the greatest achievements of modern literature.”