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The author of Wolf Hall and the newly published Bring Up The Bodies told interviewer Lynn Barber that Catholics weren't quite the ticket. "I think that nowadays the Catholic church is not an institution for respectable people", she said. When Lynn Barber got Mantel to expand, she discovered that much of her remark was down to the abuse crisis. But there was more, with Mantel going on to damn priests and nuns for being "among the worst people I knew".