OSCAR-nominated screenwriter Peter Straughan has been chosen to bring Hilary Mantel’s Booker Prize winning novels to the screen.
The Tyneside writer, who previously brought thriller Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy to the silver screen with his late wife Bridget O’Connor, will adapt Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies for the BBC.
The six-part series is Mr Straughan’s first major work since the death of his wife from cancer in 2010.
Ms Mantel – who hit the headlines recently for outspoken comments about the Duchess of Cambridge which she insisted were taken out of context – has admitted the success of the books, which are also being adapted for stage plays by the Royal Shakespeare Company, have become “a phenomenon”.
She said: “It’s so exciting to see the images that are in your mind come out of your head as it were, as if someone were decoding your dreams for you.”
Acclaimed Shakespearean actor Mark Rylance is in talks to take on the lead role for the BBC2 series about the life and times of Thomas Cromwell, which follows his rise and fall in the Tudor court.
A third novel about Cromwell, believed to be called The Mirror And The Light, is also in the pipeline.
Straughan, 45, who is Newcastle Live Theatre’s former writer-in-residence, was nominated for an Oscar with his late wife for their script adaptation of the John le Carre novel Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
They missed out on taking home the award but received a Bafta in 2012 – Ms Connor being honoured for her work posthumously.
Between 1996 to 1998, she was Northern Arts literary fellow at Newcastle and Durham universities during which time she met Straghan. They married in 2008 and had a daughter, Connie.
Mr Straughan started his career as a musician and actor after studying English at Newcastle University. He went on to win the 1997 Northern Arts Writer’s Award and his play A Rhyme for Orange won the 1997 North East People’s Play Award run by the People’s Theatre in Heaton.
His stage play Bones (2002) premiered in 1999 at Live Theatre and he has also written plays for radio.
Ms Mantel made headlines last month when she criticised Kate as having no personality and appearing to have been “gloss-varnished” during a lecture at the British Museum.
But she said: “My lecture and the subsequent essay was actually supportive of the Royal family and when I used those words about the Duchess of Cambridge, I was describing the perception of her, which has been set up in the tabloid press.”
