Gove UK history reforms under attack by Hilary Mantel

Michael Gove, education secretary, is proposing “pernicious” reforms to history teaching in schools, according to Hilary Mantel, the novelist who this week won the Man Booker prize for a second time.

In an interview with the Financial Times, the author of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies , which are set in the 16th century, said: “I don’t like the idea that we’re going to go back to spoon-feeding children with a cut-and-dried and patriotic version [of history] . . . One telling is not enough, particularly not one telling done de haut en bas....