Early Career
After university, Mantel worked in the social work department of a geriatric hospital, and then as a sales assistant in a department store. In 1972, she married Gerald McEwen, a geologist. In 1974 she began writing a novel about the French Revolution, which was later published as A Place of Greater Safety. In 1977, Mantel went to live in Botswana with her husband. Later they spent four years in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. She published a memoir of this time, Someone to Disturb, in the London Review of Books. She later said that leaving Jeddah felt like "the happiest day of my life".
Her husband Gerald McEwen gave up geology to manage his wife's business affairs.
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