Prince Charles and Hilary Mantel. Photo: Dominic Lipinski/PA.
Britain abounds in quaint survivals: Beefeaters in the Tower, salmon in the Thames, and A Book at Bedtime on BBC Radio 4. Unlike the class system, A Book at Bedtime is best experienced in the supine position. Every weekday night at 10:45, a popular actor reads for fifteen minutes from a recent novel or short story. The selections are sometimes demanding, but the difficult bits are usually abridged. For Britons taking a night off from their traditional pursuits of drinking, fighting, and drug-taking, A Book at Bedtime is a literary mug of hot cocoa. Last December, the BBC announced the airing of a new short story by Hilary Mantel, author of the bestselling Wolf Hall novels.
“The Death of Margaret Thatcher” is set in 1983, just after the Falklands War, and just before the civil war with the miners. The action occurs in a home in Windsor—not the royal castle, but a suburban terraced house, where the residents are beginning to enjoy the fruits of the Thatcher revolution. One Saturday morning, a woman opens her door to a strange man: “I was putting my Perrier water in the fridge when the doorbell rang.” She has been waiting for him: she expects the ruffian on the stair to repair her broken boiler. He has been looking for her: he is an IRA assassin. Her front window overlooks the hospital where Mrs. Thatcher is recuperating from an eye
