Hilary Mantel has experimented with a number of genres during her writing career, including a political thriller set in Saudi Arabia (‘Eight Months on Ghazza Street’) and a theological mystery (‘Fludd). The novel she will be discussing at the festival this week ‘Beyond Black’, is set in the modern day and was written around the time that Diana, Princess of Wales died. Hilary says of that time that “Diana’s passing brought about an emotional convulsion in our national life; it gave rise to a huge, primitive, heartfelt cry of mourning.” Hilary went to see a ‘psychic show’, and from this experience she developed the idea of her central character, Alison Hart, a medium who performs psychic demonstrations.

Princess Diana used to see psychics, and I asked Hilary if she thought there was a connection between the compunction for people to go on TV talk shows, like Jeremy Kyle, to reveal their personal business to strangers, and the neediness of people who visit psychics. Hilary said: “People have become ghosts in their own lives, lost a grip on solidity. They need to be affirmed in some way, and seeing themselves on TV, or seeing psychics repeatedly is a means of reaffirming their existence, by getting a response to the question ‘Tell me about myself’”.

It is her own chaotic past “distinguished by a pervasive quality of fear” that Hilary has drawn upon for the fictional account of Alison’s terrifying childhood flashbacks in ‘Beyond Black’. Hilary broke off writing her Memoir ‘Giving Up the Ghost’ (2003) to write ‘Beyond Black’, and she feels writing it informed her memoir, and vice-versa.