The whittling has finished. The judges of this year's Man Booker Prize started with a daunting 145 novels and have chosen Hilary Mantel's book ‘Bring up the Bodies.’ She becomes only the third author, after Peter Carey and J.M. Coetzee, to win the prize twice and she is also the first to win with a sequel to the first winning novel (Wolf Hall won in 2009) and also the first to win with such a short amount of time between books.

 Her revival of Thomas Cromwell – and with him the historical novel – is one of the great achievements of modern literature. There is the last volume of her trilogy still to come so her Man Booker tale may yet have a further chapter.

 Think I might have to get this book to see how her writing style works – I have to say she kind of looks like an author - see the picture below.