Thus Hilary Mantel in an interview for Der Spiegel today. “Hilary Mantel’s historical novels are celebrated in Britain, but her critiques of the establishment are widely feared,” elaborates the newspaper. “In an interview, she says her country is retreating into insularity and to attitudes prevalent in Victorian times.” She achieved fame with two recent novels set in the court of King Henry VIII. The main character in the works is Thomas Cromwell, the king’s confidant and a rebel. Much of the interview deals with her writings, but she comes really alive when the British obsession with immigration is mentioned. When asked about this phenomenon, she does not mince words:

It’s a retreat into insularity, into a mood of harshness. When people feel they’re being mistreated, they lash out against people who are weaker than themselves, immigrants for example. What’s happening here at the moment is really ugly. The government portrays poor and unfortunate people as being morally defective. This is a return to the thinking of the Victorians. Even in the Sixteenth Century, Thomas Cromwell was trying to tell people that a thriving economy has casualties and that something must be done by the state for people out of work. Even back then, you saw the tide turning against this idea that poverty was a moral weakness. Who could have predicted that it would come back into style? It’s myth making on a grand scale, and it’s poisonous.

Mantel believes that all this has to do with growing poverty in Britain. And the financial crisis is behind it. This time around, though, poverty is turning everyone toward the right. The interview does not touch the rest of Europe, but much of the subcontinent is currently suffering from obsession with immigration. The only difference is that Britain is an island nation whereas most of Europe is exposed both from the east and south. The retreat into insularity is thus not an option for many European countries. The ravages of climate change will only accentuate this sentiment across the subcontinent, but only Britain and a few other island nations will have a natural defense against a growing number of desperate immigrants. It is the future that will be really ugly in this regard. Mantel had better delve into science fiction, and soon. Historical novels are for the birds at this stage.