To dwell in the heads of vaporous ladies with fine sensibilities

Interview of the week - I have not read Wolf Hall, the much raved about novel by Hilary Mantel, which won both the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2009.  It is the first of a planned trilogy of novels charting the rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell, the powerful minister in the court of King Henry VIII. So, I barely even noticed last year that the  2nd book in the series, Bring Up the Bodies, came and was equally raved about and once again the winner of the Man Booker Prize for 2012!. 

But last night I ran into this interview with Hilary Mantel in the New York Times and really loved it!

The surprising (to me) bit was the answer to the question: What books might we be surprised to find on your shelves? The Answer:

"Stacks of books on cricket. I am fascinated by its history. It’s a story told in match statistics, but it’s also bred some stylish prose. My head is full of the ghosts of men in white playing games that were over before the Great War. "

And the best line in the interview was unarguably this one: 

"I don’t like overrefinement, or to dwell in the heads of vaporous ladies with fine sensibilities."