Video: Hilary Mantel talks about new novel 'Wolf Hall'

In the first of a series of discussions filmed at Daunt Books Will Buckley talks to Hilary Mantel about Wolf Hall, the novel which she says she was born to write and the hot favourite to win the Booker Prize on Tuesday.

In the first of a series of discussions held at Daunt Books in Marylebone Will Buckley talks to Hilary Mantel about Wolf Hall, the novel which she says she was born to write.

Set in Tudor times the book presents an engrossing portrait of Thomas Cromwell, the man commonly remembered for his role in the dissolution of the monasteries, but depicted by Mantel as a renaissance man.

Cromwell from desperately lowly beginnings in Putney progresses from being the protege of Cardinal Wolsey to being Henry VIII's right hand man, taking on the not so saintly Thomas More along the way. Hailed by the critics as 'a truly great English novel' it is both educative and enthralling, philosophical and funny. It is, quite justly, a hot favourite for the Booker prize on Tuesday.