On Saturday the Guardian review published Hilary Mantel’s new short story about the assassination of Margaret Thatcher, if you’re interested you can read it here.
Mantel was inspired to write the story after catching a glimpse of Thatcher from her window. You can read about it here. She had some difficulties in working the whole thing into a short story and when she managed it it was sold to The Telegraph for tens of thousands of pounds apparently. Obviously the subject matter doesn’t appeal to your average right-wing Telegraph reader. So the Guardian published it instead.
Now the Conservatives are complaining that the short story should never have been published, and there are talks of involving the police. It seems that nowadays we are not to be allowed to even think about things which might possibly upset some people on the extreme right. You can read about Hilary Mantel’s reaction here.
Thinking about doing something doesn’t come close to actually doing it, neither is writing about it. If it were I would have spent most of my life in jail!
Katrina,
I’m wondering what you thought of the story itself, as a work of fiction. I can see why the ultra-conservatives would go crazy, just as I can see why the Republicans would go beserk if someone were to publish a short story entitled “The Assassination of Ronald Reagan.” (Of course there is a slight problem with the latter, because someone actually did try to assassinate him, so a story would only add fuel to the fire.) Still, there are people who still revere him (don’t ask me why), so I imagine there would be a total uproar, and more than that, I must honestly say that I don’t think any American company would be brave enough to publish it.
Best to you!
Judith
Judith,
I thought the story was fine but I was quite disappointed that Mantel chose an IRA man as the assassin. It could quite as easily have been any of a huge number of ordinary Brits who were severely tempted to do her in! Of course we gave up on one on one assassinations a long time ago, the worst that any of them get now is egged!
Oh my. I just started reading the book which does not begin with this story. As a result I have been avoiding reading anything about it so as not to interfere with my impressions. I’ll be saving your post so I can check out those links once I am done with the book!
Stefanie,
I’ll be interested to hear what you think of the book, I must get around to reading it too.