One of the country's most distinguished living novelists, Hilary Mantel will discuss the impulse to recover the past that lies behind her historical fiction. The talk will be held in the stunning Alumni Auditorium, at the University of Exeter and members of the public, students and staff are welcome to attend.

The inspiration for the talk is a photograph of Hilary Mantel's great-grandmother on the doorstep of a terraced house in a Derbyshire mill village. She was far from her birthplace in Ireland, and the photograph is the single image of her that remains. The photo was taken at the end of the nineteenth century, and by the 1950s the houses were demolished, but their frontages remained: bricked-up windows, bricked-up doors, with nothing behind them. In the writer's childhood, those strange façades seemed to her a powerful image of deception and loss.

'My task,' the novelist says, 'is unbricking the doorway: getting beyond that blank façade to the space behind, where our ancestors used to live.' How do we break down, in imagination, the barrier between the living and the dead? The writer reflects on history, heritage and fiction, on memory and myth. If we build the dead a new house, she asks, will they remember the way home?

Hilary Mantel CBE is an internationally renowned author of thirteen books covering an astonishing range of genres and themes. She has won many prizes and honours for her work. Hilary Mantel's most recent novels have confirmed her global reputation. Wolf Hall was shortlisted for or won most prizes going: not only the Man Booker but also the inaugural Walter Scott Prize and the US National Book Critics Circle Award. Bring Up the Bodies, went one better, winning the 2012 Man Booker and the 2013 Costa Book Award, as well as being shortlisted for the 2013 Women's Prize for Fiction.

In 2011, Hilary Mantel became an Honorary Graduate of the University of Exeter and she is currently Visiting Professor in the College of Humanities.

The University's Vice Chancellor, Professor Sir Steve Smith, will introduce Professor Mantel and Professor Helen Taylor will chair Questions and Answers following the talk.

Refreshments may be purchased before and after the event in the University's Forum building.

Following the event, Hilary Mantel will be available to sign books.

Tickets:£5, students: £3, unreseved seating.

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