Last year I read Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (1952-2022). Through the eyes of Thomas Cromwell (1485-1540), a key adviser to Henry VIII, it took us through the sidelining of Katherine, Henry's first wife, the fall from grace of Cardinal Wolsey and Chancellor Thomas More, and the beginnings of the Church of England.

I thought it was an absolutely brilliant bit of historical fiction, and was definitely up for the next two parts of the trilogy.

Then I discovered Footnotes & Tangents, an online reading group run by Simon Haisell. This year they're doing the whole of the Cromwell trilogy. Simon provides very informative notes and links to online resources, and the reading community chip in with interesting comments. It's a great format.

I used the notes to remind myself of Wolf Hall, and then started listening to Bring Up the Bodies (first published in 2012). I had a print copy of Wolf Hall, but have been listening to this one. It's narrated quite superbly by Ben Miles, who really brings an extra dimension to the text (Henry VIII and Cromwell are always going to sound like that to me now). By the end of last month I'd caught up with my fellow-readers, and this month we all finished Bring Up the Bodies. It's the shortest of the three, at 16 hours and 22 minutes (Wolf Hall takes 25 hours and some to read, and the third, which we'll all embark on next, weighs in at a whopping 38 hours and 11 minutes).

It has been interesting to read more slowly -- an allocated section per week -- and also to read corporately, so that the text is illuminated by the views of Simon and the group. Plenty of other such book groups exist on Substack -- Simon has a list here -- but this one hits the spot for me at the moment. (In fact, I subscribe to several things on Substack, and find it a treasure trove of good minds, although I understand why many of my favourite newsletter-producers felt it necessary to leave.)

Anyway, Bring Up the Bodies. The title comes from the instruction given at the Tower of London when prisoners were brought up for trial. It tells us a lot about the nature of the process. Once you were in there on charges of treason, there was little hope you'd come out alive. All you had to worry about by that stage was what manner of death you'd be subjected to.

Whereas Wolf Hall was about the removal of Katherine of Aragon (who dies in the course of this one), Bodies is about the removal of Anne Boleyn. Because, yes, Henry has tired of her, too. Now it's Jane Seymour he has his eye on.


Jane Seymour

The book opens in September 1535. And it's all over by May 1536. As Simon Haisell points out, "Wolf Hall was a story told over many years, from Cromwell’s childhood to his supremacy in the summer of 1535. This sequel will be told in months."

Cromwell (a character who has traditionally received a very bad press) didn't exactly make us love him in Wolf Hall. But we learnt to at least admire him a bit, and feel sorry for him a bit, and come to understand that he didn't deserve all the denunciations he has been subjected to. In Bodies, however, we feel somewhat less sympathy. True, he's doing the king's bidding in his unrelenting pursuit of a case against Anne. And Anne, too, has turned on him, warned him, threatened him. That's a dangerous thing to do with someone like Cromwell. But there's clearly a lot of personal animosity and vengeance in there as well. The men who are accused of committing adultery with Anne (a charge which amounts to treason and therefore death) are all men who took part in a nasty sketch insulting Cardinal Wolsey, Cromwell's first protector. He has never forgotten or forgiven.


Thomas Wyatt

Wyatt was not part of the desecration of Wolsey's memory. So he's Cromwell's friend. He survives, despite his alleged liaison with Anne. Simon Haisell argues: "More than anything, I think Mantel’s novels are an exercise in bringing Thomas Wyatt’s version of Thomas Cromwell back to life." On Cromwell's death, Wyatt translated and adapted a Petrarch poem as an elegy: "The pillar perished is whereto I leant..."

Haisell again: If Wolf Hall was framed as a play, with theatrical epigraphs and plays-within-plays, a memory theatre at its heart, then Bring up the Bodies is set up as a game, a hunt: a bloodsport... In the last book, Thomas Cromwell became the perfect performer, arranging his face and playing all the parts. In this book, Cromwell has turned up for a fight. And it is a fight he intends to win." We open with some falconry.


Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II depicted in his book, On The Art of Hunting with Birds

And what a bloodsport it turns out to be. By the end, all five accused men (including Anne's brother, George) are dead. As is Anne.

It's not all personal, though, let's repeat. If Henry dies without an heir -- and at one point in the book, he nearly does die -- there will be civil war. As Margaret Atwood puts it, "Whatever else the Tudors did, they brought peace to England, and peace is what Cromwell works for. That, for Mantel, is one of the more praiseworthy motives for all the bloodletting that Cromwell engineers."

And Cromwell, when he's not conniving to do the king's business, and keep himself alive, has ideas: How to improve the country's infrastructure by means of an income tax; how to initiate a regime that enables the kingdom to be run by consent; how to ensure there's a prayer book written in Welsh...

Meanwhile, the modern world is being birthed. The days of the nobility are numbered, and the "new men" -- the administrators and lawyers -- are coming into their own. Early in the story, the king still looks majestic in his armour: "But chivalry’s day is over. One day soon moss will grow in the tilt yard. The days of the moneylender have arrived, and the days of the swaggering privateer; banker sits down with banker, and kings are their waiting boys."


Henry VIII tilting in front of Katherine of Aragon in 1511


The family of Henry VIII, c. 1545

For the time being, though, England is a world of turmoil. Land enclosures, the dissolution of the monasteries -- it all impacts on the common man.

And there's a very complicated international game going on, too, involving the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and many other crowned heads of Europe:


The domains of Charles V

In Bodies, we also start to see -- oh, so subtly -- the beginnings of Cromwell's fall. There are no surprises in this story, you see. We all know, before we even start the trilogy, that Cromwell, too, will meet his end at Tower Hill, felled by the executioner's axe. "Those who are made can be unmade."

And we see the beginnings of Henry's decline. He's not the sprightly prince he was. When you're a top dog, there's always someone ready to replace you. It's a dog-eat-dog world. And a weakened dog is a dangerous dog. Just look round the world today.

It's masterful the way Mantel creates a climate of tension and suspense, even though we all know the outcome. All the way through, you can feel those screws tightening. And she gives us just enough detail. A dab in this place, a dab in that. The narrative is never overloaded with description, but we have enough to vividly create the scene in our minds. The final pages are blood-soaked. But again, she doesn't present the action melodramatically. The events are foul enough to inspire their own horror. All she needs to do is a touch here, and a shadow there, and you follow, shuddering. That last scene is still in my head days later.

We don't really know the truth, of course. Who was really guilty of what? The historical account is shrouded in mystery. And for Mantel's Cromwell, it doesn't matter too much: "He needs guilty men. So he has found men who are guilty. Though perhaps not guilty as charged."

She frequently reminds us, through Cromwell, of the difficulty of really knowing "what happened": "What is the nature of the border between truth and lies? It is permeable and blurred because it is planted thick with rumour, confabulation, misunderstandings and twisted tales. Truth can break the gates down, truth can howl in the street; unless truth is pleasing, personable and easy to like, she is condemned to stay whimpering at the back door."


Mary Shelton, Anne's cousin and a lady-in-waiting


An account of Mark Smeaton's confession

Put all this together, and you get a cracking book. Amy Boesky concludes her review like this: "If Cromwell were to write a book, he imagines, it would be titled The Book Called Henry. Like Mantel’s trilogy, Cromwell’s 'book' would be a study of absolutism and the damage it wreaks. In this second novel, Mantel has deepened and complicated her portraiture of power. Her brilliance lies not only in the richness of her writing, but in her ability to make history seem as if it is still happening, as if the choices she narrates could somehow be made again with different outcomes. We pause, looking over Cromwell’s shoulder, as he lifts the nib of his pen. As we read, it seems as if the outcomes for these characters remain uncertain. We share in Cromwell’s brutality, we experience his fleeting moments of tenderness and loss, and as the novel ends, we feel his uneasiness -- the lengthening shadows falling across the page."

Nor does Mantel skimp on the curious things. Examples:

-- Confiscated "relics". St Edmond's nail-parings, for example: "Chuck them in with the rest," says Cromwell. "The man must have had 500 fingers."
-- Between 1194 and 1589, the crown issued 550 'licenses to crenellate' private houses across England..."

Next: The Mirror and the Light. But there won't be a post about that until the end of the year, as I'll be keeping pace with my cohort...