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Historical novelist Hilary Mantel recorded an unprecedented literary achievement when her two most recent novels, Wolf Hall and its sequel Bring Up the Bodies, both won the Man Booker Prize. The two novels are the first volumes of a trilogy recording the life of Thomas Cromwell, and Mantel is now working on the final one, to be called The Mirror and the Light. Her win in the 2012 Man Booker awards made her the first woman and only the third author to win the award twice.

Wolf Hall, the story of Henry VIII’s minister Thomas Cromwell, was published to huge critical acclaim in 2009. That year’s Man Booker judging panel described it as an ‘extraordinary piece of storytelling’. Announcing Bring Up the Bodies as the 2012 winner, chairman of the judges Sir Peter Stothard said it was ‘for vitality, for fierce intelligence and most of all for prose’.

Mantel’s achievements will be recognised at the end of this event by the award of the Bodley Medal by Bodley’s Librarian, Dr Sarah Thomas. The medal is awarded by the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford to individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the worlds of culture, science and communication. Past winners include writer and actor Alan Bennett, film director Lord Richard Attenborough, inventor of the world wide web Sir Tim Berners-Lee, and last year’s winner, novelist Peter Carey.