Hilary Mantel has said she feels “ashamed” by the UK government’s treatment of migrants and asylum seekers and is intending to become an Irish citizen to “become a European again”.
In a wide-ranging interview with La Repubblica, the twice Booker prize-winning novelist also gave her view on the monarchy, told how endometriosis has “devastated my life”, and how Boris Johnson “should not be in public life”. She also addresses the criticism of JK Rowling and her stance on transgender rights.
In response to a question about Priti Patel’s rhetoric on migration and asylum seekers and whether it marks the “ugliest side of the new ‘global Britain’ post-Brexit”, the writer told the Italian publication: “It was my grandparents’ generation who were immigrants [from Ireland]; sometimes my life gets confused with my fiction, because a number of my characters have Irish parents.
“We see the ugly face of contemporary Britain in the people on the beaches abusing exhausted refugees even as they scramble to the shore. It makes one ashamed.
“And ashamed, of course, to be living in the nation that elected this government, and allows itself to be led by it.” » | Nadeem Badshah | Saturday, September 4, 2021
Hear! Hear! Long live Europe! Es lebe Europa! Vive l'Europe ! – Mark
