British author Hilary Mantel has won this year's Booker Prize for her novel about Henry VIII's adviser, Thomas Cromwell. Wolf Hall, which is set in the 1520s, tells the story of Cromwell's rise to prominence in the Tudor court. The novel had been odds-on favourite to win the award. It beat competition from literary heavyweights like AS Byatt and JM Coetzee, who would have become the first person to win the prize three times if he had been successful.