Hilary Mantel - Early Life

Early Life

Hilary Mary Thompson was born in Glossop, Derbyshire, the eldest of three children, and was brought up in the mill village of Hadfield, attending St Charles local Roman Catholic primary school. Her parents, Margaret and Henry Thompson, both of Irish descent, were also born in England. Her parents separated and she did not see her father after age eleven. The family minus her father, but with Jack Mantel (1932-1995) who by now had moved in with them, relocated to Romiley, Cheshire, and Jack became her unofficial stepfather. She took her de-facto stepfather's surname legally. She has explored her family background, the mainspring of much of her fiction, in her memoir, Giving Up the Ghost (2003). She lost her religious faith at age 12 and says that this left a permanent mark on her:

the "real cliche, the sense of guilt. You grow up believing that you're wrong and bad. And for me, because I took what I was told really seriously, it bred a very intense habit of introspection and self-examination and a terrible severity with myself. So that nothing was ever good enough. It's like installing a policeman, and one moreover who keeps changing the law."

She attended Harrytown Convent in Romiley, Cheshire. In 1970 she began her studies at the London School of Economics to read law. She transferred to the University of Sheffield and graduated as Bachelor of Jurisprudence in 1973. During her university years, she was a socialist.