The two books together are simply magnificent. So now, two years later, there comes a sequel, and any fears I might have had are quickly dispelled: the same language, the same inhabitation of the age. I wrote at Big Other about Mantel’s use of the word “he”, and what it signifies about identity and narrative voice. But for me what I found most engaging was the language. I know most commentators focussed on the way the novel connected with history, the rehabilitation of Thomas Cromwell (up to that point familiarly presented as one of the villains of the age), the sense of being fully absorbed in the politics of the age. I remember the excitement of reading Wolf Hall when it first came out. I reviewed the novel for the Los Angeles Review of Books. There is always something new to discover within its maze of distortions, uncertainties, twists in time and games with identity. I have read it several times now, and each time it seems fresh, each time the complexity, the daring, the humour all combine to make the book exciting and invigorating.

It is among the two or three very best novels Priest has written. When I started this exercise, this was the first book I thought of. I’d be very interested tosee what your lists are. So here are ten books from the last ten years.

But if you set yourself rules, I suppose the least you can do is stick to them. I was sorely tempted to list two books from one year and none from another. Some of these were obvious from the moment I thought of doing this list (the first and last on the list, for instance), others less so, mostly when there were years in which no title really sang out to me. That is, I admit, an artificial rule, and it did give me problems on a couple of years, but it avoids the problem that the list would otherwise be dominated by the same two or three names. I have chosen one book from each year, with the added proviso that I have chosen no more than one title per author.

The thing itself adam roberts