A University of Worcester academic has interviewed a well-known actor taking centre stage in the final adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy. Her interview features in the upcoming first international conference on the author’s work.
Dr Lucy Arnold
Dr Lucy Arnold, Lecturer in English Literature, was in conversation with The Crown actor, Ben Miles, about his performance as Thomas Cromwell, the central character in Mantel’s Booker Prize-winning series of novels. He resumes the role in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of The Mirror and the Light, the third novel, which opened in the West End on Wednesday, October 6.
The interview will be screened as part of a virtual conference on Mantel, held in association with The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, in California, on October 14 and 15.
Dr Arnold, who co-organised the conference with fellow Mantel scholar Dr Eileen Pollard, said: “I feel immensely privileged to have been given this opportunity, by the Huntington Library, and by Ben, to explore these ideas and to think about these novels in a different way, and to put their stage adaptations at the centre of critical conversations about Hilary's work.”
On screen Miles is best known for roles in Netflix’s royal drama The Crown, BBC's The Trial of Christine Keeler and The Capture as well as ITV’s classic drama The Forsyte Saga. On stage he has played Cromwell in all three Wolf Hall plays and recently starred in The Lehman Trilogy at the National Theatre, the Park Avenue Armory, New York and in the West End.
Mantel’s first two novels led on to sell-out play adaptations in the West End. However, this time around, Mantel adapted The Mirror and the Light herself with Miles acting as co-writer.
Dr Arnold said: “One of the reasons I was so keen to speak with Ben was the unique perspective he has on the character of Cromwell, having encountered him as a reader, played him on stage as an actor, and now contributed to writing that character through collaborating with Hilary on the final adaptation. It's a really multifaceted engagement with a literary figure which it’s quite rare to be able to interrogate.
“My hope is that the interview will allow people to get a behind the scenes look at the process of adaptation and its dynamics but also to continue the conversations these ground-breaking novels have started, about history and how we relate to it, and how it moves us even in the contemporary moment, how the historical dead might still be grasping contemporary events.”
Dr Arnold discussed a wide range of topics with Miles. “We explored the challenges of embodying a character who we experience in the novels primarily through his thoughts and impressions of the world rather than being able to view him from the outside, and the associated challenges of bringing the materiality of the Tudor world to life on stage. We were also able to discuss the wider implications of the adaptations, including the ethics involved in representing fictionalisations of real historical figures.”
Dr Arnold, who specialises in the works of Mantel, will also give a lecture at the conference, which has attracted an international cohort of speakers and Mantel scholars. Due to Covid, the conference has moved online and is free.