Part I
“Blot, Erase, Delete” first published in Index on Censorship; “Last Morning in Al Hamra” and “Dreaming of Pork and Porn” first published in the Spectator; “Meeting My Stepfather” first published in the London Review of Books; “On Grief” first published in A Grief Observed: Readers’ Edition, Faber. All other pieces first published in the Guardian.
Part II
All published in the Spectator, May 1987–December 1990.
Part III
All published in the New York Review of Books, 1998–2013.
Part IV
The Reith Lectures first broadcast on BBC Radio 4, June–July 2017. Extract from W. H. Auden, “As I Walked Out One Evening,” copyright © 1938 by W. H. Auden, renewed. Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd. All rights reserved.
Part V
“Bryant Park: A Memoir” first published in the New Yorker; “No Passport Required” first published in On Modern British Fiction, edited by Zachary Leader, Oxford University Press; “Elizabeth Jane Howard,” published in the Guardian, is an edited version of Hilary Mantel’s introduction to The Long View by Elizabeth Jane Howard, Picador Classics; “If the Glance of a Woman Can Sour Cream” first published in My Lord’s: A Celebration of the World’s Greatest Cricket Ground, edited by Tim Heald, Collins Willow; “A Letter to Thomas More, Knight” first published in Holbein’s Sir Thomas More by Hilary Mantel and Xavier F. Salomon, The Frick Collection, New York, in association with D. Giles Limited, London; “Royal Bodies” first published in the London Review of Books; “Touching Hands with the Lost” commissioned by Opera North for their 2007 production of Monteverdi’s Orfeo. All other pieces first published in the Guardian.