Wolf Hall author, Dame Hilary Mantel, left over £4million in her will… all to her husband she once divorced and then, remarried.
The best-selling writer penned 12 novels and two collections of short stories.
She won the Booker Prize twice.
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She was dubbed a “genius” by Harry Potter author, JK Rowling.
The first was for her 2009 novel Wolf Hall, a fictional account of Thomas Cromwell’s rise to power in the court of Henry VIII.
The second was for its 2012 sequel, Bring Up the Bodies.
The third instalment of the Cromwell trilogy, The Mirror and the Light, was longlisted for the same prize.
The trilogy has gone on to sell more than five million copies.
They were adapted for TV in two BBC drama series, starring Damian Lewis.
Mantel died in September 2022 aged 70.
She had amassed a fortune of £4,677,327 at the time of her death.
This was reduced to a net sum of £4.182,353.
Documents show it was left to her geologist husband, Gerald McEwen.
He was the sole executor of her will, which was signed in March 2018 under the name Hilary McEwen, her married name as reported by Need To Know.
The couple who lived in Budleigh Salterton, Devon, first married in 1972 when Hilary was 20.
They divorced in 1981, but remarried in 1982.
He gave up geology to manage his wife’s business.
She was unable to have children because of a severe form of endometriosis.
The condition resulted in a surgical menopause at the age of 27, in what was considered at the time, to be a necessary treatment.
In 2005, she revealed her anger at not being able to have children, was part of the reason they divorced.
But after two years apart, both realised they had changed.
She added she was still haunted by the ghosts of the children she couldn’t have and the mother she couldn’t be.
At the time of her death, Rowling paid tribute saying: “We have lost a genius.”
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