ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
Dispassionate, considered, forensic
TOM KING recommends a collection of acutely observed writings, from the personal to the political, by Hilary Mantel

Mantel Pieces: Royal Bodies and Other Writing from the London Review of Books
by Hilary Mantel
(4th Estate, £16.99)
HILARY MANTEL, most famous for her epic Thomas Cromwell trilogy — Wolf Hall, Bring up the Bodies and The Mirror and the Light — first made a name for herself on the 1980s book-reviewing scene.
It was very different in those days, she writes, with more daily papers “and they made space for books.”
She wrote for the Listener, the Literary Review and, forgive her, the Spectator. But she found a home at the London Review of Books (LRB), for which she has written ever since.
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