Hilary Mantel wins Man Booker Prize for a record second time It is a well-trodden story and yet she has the ability to bring it to life as though for the first time. Sir Peter compared Mantel's portrayal of Thomas Cromwell to Don Corleone. "There is certainly a Godfather element to this book, including the moral ambiguity," he said. The win came as a happy surprise for Mantel, 60, who said when shortlisted: "Nobody, including me, expects a writer to do it twice. But it would not be human to not want to win. Only two writers have done the double before: JM Coetzee and Peter Carey, who hail from South Africa and Australia respectively. She has described the process of writing Bring Up The Bodies as a gruelling one, saying: "I can't remember a time in my writing life when I was so beaten up by a book." When the going got tough, she would paused to draw inspiration from a portrait of Thomas Cromwell that hangs in her Devon home. Mantel, a former social worker, first attempted historical fiction in 1979 with A Place of Greater Safety, set during the French Revolution. It was rejected by every publisher who read it and did not see the light of day until 1992. However, such is her popularity now that the BBC has snapped up the rights to Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies, and is turning them into a six-part period drama. She is currently writing the final instalment in the trilogy, The Mirror and the Light. This year's judging panel included Dan Stevens, the Downton Abbey actor, and was chaired by Sir Peter, editor of the Times Literary Supplement. Sir Peter was at pains to distance himself from last year's judges, who were criticised for citing "readability" as a key criteria. There was disagreement over which book should win this year but the judges arrived at Bring Up The Bodies via "a rigorous process of literary criticism," Sir Peter said. Ironically, Bring Up The Bodies has proved to be the most "readable" book on the shortlist, selling over 100,000 copies so far in Britain. It only remains to be seen how Mantel will spend her £50,000 prize money. When she won in 2009, she joked that she would fritter away the cash on "sex, drugs and rock'n"roll." Asked about that last week, she laughed: "Oh, it was hideously disappointing, because when it came to it I realised that paying the mortgage off was a bigger imperative."