Bookies' favourite Hilary Mantel has scooped the Man Booker Prize for Fiction for her "demanding" novel about Henry VIII's adviser Thomas Cromwell.
Set in the 1520s - and also described as "hard work" by judges - Wolf Hall tells the story of Cromwell's rise to prominence in the Tudor court.
The book won by a secret narrow majority vote of three to two after more than three hours' deliberation, which Ion Trewin, literary director of the Booker Prizes said was not an unusual divide.
Mantel's work was picked from a shortlist of literary heavyweights including Sarah Waters, AS Byatt and JM Coetzee - who could have been the first person to win the prize three times.
Bookmaker William Hill had Mantel as odds-on favourite to win the award at 10/11 - the shortest odds it has ever given a book to win the prize.
Mr Trewin said the last time a favourite walked off with the prize was Yann Martel's Life Of Pi in 2002, which went on to shift more than one million copies in the UK and the Commonwealth.
Mr Trewin said sales of the longlist and shortlist had rocketed "much more so than any previous year".
Wolf Hall has already sold 48,000 copies, according to UK publishing figures.
Mantel, 57, from Glossop, Derbyshire, spent five years writing Wolf Hall and is currently working on a sequel.
