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# The Working Class Library Episode 2: Giving Up the Ghost by Hilary Mantel
- URL: https://thebeemagazine.com/the-working-class-library-episode-2-giving-up-the-ghost-by-hilary-mantel/
- Published: 2025-05-04T08:20:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-06-11T19:00:39.000Z
- Description: Louise Doughty joins us to consider the place of Hilary Mantel’s memoir in our library.
- Author: Richard Benson
- Tags: Podcast

[Listen to "Working Class Library - Giving up the Ghost - Hilary Mantel" on Spreaker.](https://www.spreaker.com/episode/working-class-library-giving-up-the-ghost-hilary-mantel--65218089?ref=thebeemagazine.com) 

The Working Class Library is the Bee’s podcast. Each month, a writer joins Richard Benson, editor of the Bee, and Claire Malcolm, CEO of [New Writing North](https://newwritingnorth.com/?ref=thebeemagazine.com), to discuss a book and decide whether it deserves a place on the shelves of our imaginary library of great books by and about ordinary people. 

In our second episode, novelist [Louise Doughty](https://www.louisedoughty.com/?ref=thebeemagazine.com) drops in to consider Hilary Mantel’s 2003 memoir [Giving Up the Ghost](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/may/10/featuresreviews.guardianreview18?ref=thebeemagazine.com). 

Readers who came to Hilary Mantel after her double-Booker-winning success with Wolf Hall made her a star of the literary world may not be aware that she grew up in a working-class home in a Derbyshire mill town. She, however, said many times that that background had a decisive influence on her as a person and a writer, and in Giving Up the Ghost she shows how. In the end, her status as a working-class woman almost leads to her death. Her memoir prompts the question, how much things changed – or not?

Thoughts? Comments? Thoughts apprehended from a spiritual plane? Please share them with us on our social media channels. 

### Books Mentioned

- Louise Doughty – [A Bird in Winter](https://uk.bookshop.org/a/15568/9780571322190?ref=thebeemagazine.com), [Platform Seven](https://uk.bookshop.org/a/15568/9780571321964?ref=thebeemagazine.com), [Apple Tree Yard](https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/apple-tree-yard-from-the-writer-of-bbc-smash-hit-drama-crossfire-louise-doughty/4191691?ean=9780571278640&ref=thebeemagazine.com), [Whatever You Love](https://uk.bookshop.org/a/15568/9780571313440?ref=thebeemagazine.com), [Fires in the Dark](https://uk.bookshop.org/a/15568/9781471137587?ref=thebeemagazine.com), [Stone Cradle](https://uk.bookshop.org/a/15568/9781471137570?ref=thebeemagazine.com)
- Hilary Mantel – [Every Day is Mother’s Day](https://uk.bookshop.org/a/15568/9781841153391?ref=thebeemagazine.com), [Beyond Black](https://uk.bookshop.org/a/15568/9780008609979?ref=thebeemagazine.com), [Vacant Possession](https://uk.bookshop.org/a/15568/9781841153407?ref=thebeemagazine.com), [Wolf Hall](https://uk.bookshop.org/a/15568/9780008381691?ref=thebeemagazine.com), [Bring Up the Bodies](https://uk.bookshop.org/a/15568/9780008749576?ref=thebeemagazine.com), [Eight Months on Ghazzah Street](https://uk.bookshop.org/a/15568/9780007172917?ref=thebeemagazine.com), [A Place of Greater Safety](https://uk.bookshop.org/a/15568/9780007250554?ref=thebeemagazine.com), [The Mirror and the Light](https://uk.bookshop.org/a/15568/9780008739553?ref=thebeemagazine.com), [Fludd](https://uk.bookshop.org/a/15568/9780007172894?ref=thebeemagazine.com), [A Memoir of My Former Self: A Life in Writing](https://uk.bookshop.org/a/15568/9781399813884?ref=thebeemagazine.com)

[An Introduction to Giving Up the Ghost by Hilary MantelHer working-class background was overlooked, but the double-Booker winner said it determined how she saw the world.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/fc/56/fc56b9ab-b4c1-4291-8dc6-e491452ed510/content/images/icon/favicon-9e0c372b-6cad-4470-a5bf-e0406b951355.png)The BeeGeorgia Poplett![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/fc/56/fc56b9ab-b4c1-4291-8dc6-e491452ed510/content/images/thumbnail/mantel-c4f1d8b2-385e-405c-a167-eb92f539292a.jpg)](https://thebeemagazine.com/an-introduction-to-giving-up-the-ghost-by-hilary-mantel/)

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