 Hensher wrote the libretto for Thomas Adès's opera "Powder Her Face" (1995) and in 2015 he edited "The Penguin Book of the British Short Story".Hensher's early works of fiction been characterized as having an "ironic, knowing distance from their characters" and "icily precise skewerings of pretension and hypocrisy".His historical novel "The Mulberry Empire" "echoes with the rhythm and language of folk tales" while "play[ing] games" with narrative forms.