Right after, they'll know where the shot's come from, it won't take any time for them to work that out. Once I get down the stairs and out the front door, they'll have me right there in the street. I'm going to take the gun, so as soon as they sight me they'll shoot me dead.'' He paused and then said, as if I had demurred, ''It's the best way.'' He crumpled up the kitchen roll and looked around for the bin. I took the paper from him, he grunted, then applied himself to unstrapping his bag, a canvas holdall that I supposed would be as suitable for a photographer as for any tradesman. But one by one he took out metal parts, which, even in my ignorance, I knew were not part of a photographer's kit. He began to assemble them; his fingertips were delicate. As he worked he sang, almost under his breath, a little song from the football terraces: Wilson, Jamie (28 August 2000). "Brighton bomber thinks again". The Guardian. London . Retrieved 26 April 2010.

Is that your great suggestion? They shoot me a bit further along the street? Okay, we'll give it a go. Exit along another line. A little surprise.'' The story, which is easily the best in the book and certainly the only one running on the same phenomenal narrative engines as the Thomas Cromwell books, was originally published as memoir (in the London Review of Books). It works well as fiction, but it may be that its strength owes something to its basis in reality. On the evening of October 11, 1984, Margaret Thatcher, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, had her picture taken with a giant blue Teddy bear. It was the prize in a raffle at a gala being held at a club called Top Rank, in the resort town of Brighton, as part of the annual Conservative Party Conference. (Thatcher liked Teddy bears; she had two of her own, Humphrey and Mrs. Teddy, which she sometimes lent out for charitable events.) Thatcher, dressed in an evening gown with an enormous floral ruff, then returned to the Brighton Grand Hotel, where she and her husband, Denis, were staying, in Room 129-130—the Napoleon Suite. Denis went to sleep, but Thatcher, as was her habit, kept working, along with members of her staff. They were going over some papers related to the municipal affairs of Liverpool when, at 2:54 A.M., there was a boom, and then a crash. Plaster began to fall from the ceiling. Three million unemployed,'' he said. ''Most of them live round our way. It wouldn't be a problem here, would it?''

Thatcher 'barely escaped death'

When, for a Guardian article in 2021, I asked Magee about the pseudonym, he said there was no hidden significance – it was a last-minute random choice. This is implausible. The IRA had stalked Thatcher since the 1981 hunger strikes. Brighton was a one-off opportunity that followed elaborate planning: scouts had surveilled previous party conferences and a construction engineer had inspected the Grand’s architecture. G7 Summit in Williamsburg, Virginia, 1983: (from left) Pierre Trudeau, Gaston Thorn, Helmut Kohl, Francois Mitterrand, Ronald Reagan, Nakasone Yasuhiro, Margaret Thatcher, and Amintore Fanfani. (more) Oh, for God's sake.'' He snorted. ''Why would we do anything? No need. He got the nod. We have pals all over the place.''

Within this preoccupation with the past, the collection covers a lot of ground: anorexia, car accidents and rape all feature. Infidelity is explored in two short stories – one at the beginning of an affair (‘I meant to ask her to be French’ the protagonist exclaims), and one at the end (‘it’s a long time now since he was subject to urges of the flesh’). If it weren’t for the persistence of this story about Sheila Joplin and the stew, I would have thought, in later life, that I had dreamed Mary.’ On the half-landing there is a door. It looks like the door to a broom cupboard. But it is heavy. Heavy to pull, hand slipping on the brass knob. It was hard for me to imagine the busy network of activity that lay behind the day's plans. ''Wait,'' I'd said to him, as I asked him, ''Tea or coffee?'' as I switched the kettle on. ''You know I was expecting the boiler man? I'm sure he'll be here soon.'' She couldn't turn herself into a posh girl with the right vowels. If you're that dissatisfied with yourself you try to fix other people, and if they won't be fixed you become punitive."One of the central principles of the Good Friday Agreement is that there is no single way to be Irish. It was treated as a turning point when the 2021 Northern Ireland census showed, for the first time, that more people had been brought up in Catholic than in Protestant households, but a fair number said that they weren’t religious at all. And the percentage of Catholics in the Republic has fallen to seventy-eight, a number that includes many whose first language is Polish or Portuguese. The I.R.A., for that matter, was never as Catholic, in a religious sense, as its martyrology might suggest, in part because it also had a Marxist streak. Today, Sinn Féin is the largest party in the North, and one of the largest in the Republic, not because of its militancy but because of its Bernie Sanders-like social program. Mary Lou McDonald, who succeeded Adams as the Party’s leader, has a decent chance of becoming the next Taoiseach, or Prime Minister. He lurched forward, hand groping for the gun. It wasn't to shoot me, though my heart leapt. He glared down into the gardens, tensing as if he were going to butt his head through the glass. He made a small, dissatisfied grunt, and sat down again. ''A bloody cat on the fence.'' He nodded. ''And I want you to understand that. I'm not shooting her because she doesn't like the opera. Or because you don't care for – what in sod's name do you call it? – her accessories. It's not about her handbag. It's not about her hairdo. It's about Ireland. Only Ireland, right?'' Writing short stories has provided Mantel with a break from Cromwell, although she said she expected to complete The Mirror and the Light, the third instalment of her trilogy, next year. Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies won the Man Booker prize in 2009 and 2012 respectively.