Contents

1. Title Page
2. Copyright Notice
3. Editor’s Note
4. PART I: Once Upon a Life
5. On the One Hand
6. I Once Stole a Book
7. Exam Fever
8. Where Do Stories Come From?
9. Persons from Porlock
10. Which Bits of English History Are My History?
11. Blot, Erase, Delete
12. Last Morning in Al Hamra
13. Night Visions
14. The Palace Revolutionary
15. Meeting My Stepfather
16. Wicked Parents in Fairy Tales
17. A Memoir of My Former Self
18. Dreaming of Pork and Porn
19. A Doctor’s Diaries
20. Holy Disorders
21. Written on Our Bodies
22. Every Part of My Body Hurts
23. Once Upon a Life
24. The Princess Myth
25. On Grief
26. PART II: Writing in the Dark
27. Outrage Merchant: Prick Up Your Ears
28. Mad, Bad and Dangerous: Fatal Attraction
29. Good Clean Violence: RoboCop
30. Sixties Survivors: Withnail and I
31. Not by Bread Alone: Babette’s Feast and Barfly
32. Fallen Angels: Wings of Desire
33. When Sex Began: Scandal
34. Bittersweet Treat: When Harry Met Sally
35. Unsentimental Education: A Short Film About Love
36. Natural Disaster: Sweetie
37. Taking the Mickey: Wild Orchid
38. Happily Ever After: Romauld et Juliette
39. Don’t Take the Vicar: Wild at Heart
40. In the Company of Savages: Goodfellas
41. Polite Young Things: Metropolitan
42. PART III: Turn the Page
43. Not “Everybody’s Dear Jane”: On Jane Austen
44. Killer Children: On Gitta Sereny
45. Figures in a Landsape: On Annie Proulx
46. Conservative Rebel: On Rebecca West
47. A Past Recaptured: On Sybille Bedford
48. Getting Through: On John McGahern
49. The Right to Life: On Capital Punishment
50. Fashion Queen: On Marie Antoinette
51. Religion and the Decline of Magic: On Keith Thomas
52. A Book of the World: On V. S. Naipaul
53. PART IV: The Reith Lectures
54. The Day Is for Leaving
55. The Iron Maiden
56. Silence Grips the Town
57. Can These Bones Live?
58. Adaptation
59. PART V: The Moon Was a Tender Crescent
60. Bryant Park: A Memoir
61. Real Books in Imaginary Houses
62. A Life of Biggles
63. Nostalgic for Disorder
64. No Passport Required
65. “How I Became a Writer” Stories
66. Female Role Novels
67. Women over Fifty: The Invisible Generation
68. Elizabeth Jane Howard
69. If the Glance of a Woman Can Sour Cream
70. At First Sniff
71. The Joys of Stationery
72. The Books I Will Never Write
73. On the Right Track
74. The Other King
75. Anne Boleyn: Witch, Bitch, Temptress, Feminist
76. How I Came to Write Wolf Hall
77. Unfreezing Antique Feeling
78. A Letter to Thomas More, Knight
79. Royal Bodies
80. Touching Hands with the Lost
81. Credits
82. Also by Hilary Mantel
83. About the Author
84. Copyright