Written by Hilary Mantel, who died in 2022 at the age of 70, this was published in 2009, and won the Booker Prize that same year.

We're in Tudor England. In the first 3.5 decades of the 16th century, to be precise.

Henry VIII is frustrated by the lack of a male heir, and wants a new wife so that he can have another shot at legitimate paternity. This quest is not just a matter of pride. Civil war in England is a thing of recent memory, and questions over the succession spell vulnerability. But it brings him up against the Pope and much of continental Europe (not to mention many of his own citizens). And what is primarily a political endeavour plays out at a time when religious differences are becoming ever more bitter and violent (the Protestant Reformation began in 1517, with Martin Luther's 95 Theses; William Tyndale produced his English translation of the New Testament in 1525).

The narrative takes us progressively through the fall of Thomas Wolsey (cardinal and powerful state administrator), the eventual sidelining of Katherine (Henry's first wife), the marriage to Anne Boleyn, and finally, the fall of Lord Chancellor Thomas More (an opponent of the Reformation, but also an opponent of the King's separation from the Catholic Church). By way of laying the ground for the next volume in the trilogy, it also establishes the lawless environment (by repute anyway) of Wolf Hall, seat of the Seymour family.


Winchester. King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn visited the city during the summer of 1535 (two years after Anne's coronation)

These events are all charted through the eyes of Thomas Cromwell, once a loyal servant of Wolsey's, and now an increasingly important aide to the king, as he attempts to help his royal majesty reach his goals while still keeping his own head on his shoulders.

This is the second "real book" I've read in quick succession. I had already bought the second two parts of the trilogy as audiobooks when I read that many readers feel a bit lost at the beginning... Since one of the continuing advantages of old-fashioned books is that they allow you to flip around easily, paper seemed the way to go for this introductory volume.



And I have to say I made extensive use of that handy list of characters in the front... EVERYONE is called Thomas, it seems. Or Mary. There are vast tribes of aristocrats. And there's that confusing English habit of granting titles, so that the ennobled end up with at least three names.

There is not much historical scene-setting (which is probably good, as such attempts can make for dry and artificial beginnings). Rather, you're tipped right in there, relying on the characters and the dialogue to point the way. Complicating things still further is the fact that intrigue is absolutely the name of the game. This person is now that person's secret lover. Or enemy. Or both... And the prolific use of the pronoun "he" often forces you to re-read passages. We're seeing things through the eyes of Thomas Cromwell. But it's not an I-narrative. It's a he-narrative. It's just that sometimes we're not sure which "he" is which.

Having said all this, it's a brilliant read. Yes, you have to work a bit, especially at the beginning, but it is so, so worth it. Mantel is extraordinarily good at evoking the age. Her description is very lightly done, but always telling; the dialogue is modern, yet without sounding blatantly anachronistic. She does submerged tension magnificently.



And the central character? Well, he's fascinating...

Brought up in an environment of poverty and violence, Cromwell has learned to take care of himself. He's resourceful, knowledgeable, and persuasive, always giving at least the impression of willingness to use all necessary means ("A man's power is in the half-light... It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires"). He's supremely pragmatic; he's cunning and persistent. All these characteristics make him "useful", a good fixer, a good go-between ("I am always translating, he thinks: if not language to language, then person to person"). In addition, he's loyal, hardworking, and self-effacing. He's melancholy by nature, and the sudden deaths of his wife and daughters -- from the "sweating sickness" plague (probably a hantavirus) -- can't have helped in this respect. He's also scathing towards the Catholic church and its institutions ("When did anything good last come from a monastery? They do not invent, they only repeat, and what they repeat is corrupt").

Thomas More, as seen through the eyes of Cromwell, is vindictive, cruel, intransigent, arrogant, deceitful, slightly weird (what with the self-punishment and the rumours about his daughter), and horribly misogynistic. This is a far cry from the way the man was portrayed in Robert Bolt's A Man for all Seasons (1954), and there has been push-back on this from various quarters. Whatever the "truth" is, the novel teaches us -- against convention -- to dislike More, and respect, albeit cautiously, Cromwell.



You would NOT want to live in this era. Your fortunes can literally reverse overnight. And the stench of death wafts over the pages: Death by disease; death by hunger; death by soldiering; death by hanging, beheading, burning...

And politically, everything in flux, with nothing quite standing on firm foundations yet.

We start to see a shift from horizontal (cosmopolitan) forms of government (represented by allegiances to religious figureheads beyond the state's borders) to vertical (nationalist) ones -- which still have to negotiate with other cosmopolitan forces: "How can he explain to [Henry]? The world is not run from where he thinks... The world is run from Antwerp, from Florence, from places he has never imagined... Not from castle walls, but from counting houses."

We're also witnessing parallel shifts in the authority of kingship, from divine right to popular assent: "It is from the will of the people, expressed in Parliament, that a king derives his kingship."



Yet, in some ways, the political considerations sound very familiar.

All this turmoil is playing out against a background of technological innovation, for example. The printing press has transformed communication: "[Cromwell] feels a moment of jealousy towards the dead, to those who served kings in slower times than these; nowadays the products of some bought or poisoned brain can be disseminated through Europe in a month."

There are always questions of intent: "Wolsey always said that the making of a treaty is the treaty. It doesn't matter what the terms are, just that there are terms. It's the goodwill that matters. When that runs out, the treaty is broken, whatever the terms say." There is always the power of words: "When you are writing laws you are testing words to find their utmost power. Like spells, they have to make things happen in the real world, and like spells, they only work if people believe in them." There is always the sense that the lives of many are in the hands of a few: "The fate of peoples is made like this, two men in small rooms."

Weighty themes. But the book is also quite funny in parts. Sample dialogues:

-- "His reliquary! ... To part with it like this! It is a piece of the true Cross!"
-- "We'll get him another. I know a man in Pisa makes them then for five florins... And you get a certificate with St Peter's thumbprint, to say they're genuine."

-- "Can Henry know and not know?"
-- "That is perfectly possible. He is a prince of very large capacities."

In sum, this was a tour de force. And I will certainly be moving on to the other volumes in due course (though I'll probably try to crib a list of characters from somewhere...)

The past is endlessly fascinating, after all: "It's the living that turn and chase the dead. The long bones and skulls are tumbled from their shrouds, and words like stones thrust into their rattling mouths: we edit their writings, we rewrite their lives."