Booker Prize winner Hilary Mantel dies aged 70

LONDON: Hilary Mantel, the first British novelist to win the Booker Prize twice and who sold millions of books around the world, has died aged 70, her publishers announced on Friday.

"We are heartbroken at the death of our beloved author, Dame Hilary Mantel, and our thoughts are with her friends and family, especially her husband, Gerald," 4th Estate Books said.

"This is a devastating loss and we can only be grateful she left us with such a magnificent body of work," it added, providing no other details. Mantel won the Booker Prize for "Wolf Hall" (2009) and "Bring Up the Bodies" (2012) and had been tipped to win again in 2020 with "The Mirror & The Light," the third in the trilogy.

The Wolf Hall Trilogy has so far been translated into 41 languages with worldwide sales of more than five million. The television adaptation of the first two books, starring Mark Rylance, Damian Lewis, Claire Foy and Jonathan Pryce, was nominated at both the Emmy and Golden Globe Awards.

"We’ve lost a genius," tweeted author J K Rowling on Friday, leading tributes. Scottish leader Nicola Sturgeon said on Twitter that it was "impossible to overstate the significance of the literary legacy Hilary Mantel leaves behind," describing the Wolf Hall Trilogy as her "crowning achievement".