Getting Inside Cromwell’s Head

Hilary Mantel's Tudor world

I was talking to a good friend of mine who enjoys history and suggested he might like to read Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall – the first book in her fictional trilogy on Thomas Cromwell, doomed advisor to Henry VIII during the span of a particularly turbulent decade in Tudor England. My friend had no interest whatsoever in reading fiction, he practically spat the word, citing that he prefers to read actual history – the facts. Historical fiction seems to polarise opinion in this way.

Clearly, then, my friend won’t be anticipating as I am, the third instalment in the trilogy, The Mirror and the Light, which was supposed to be released in August of 2018. I say supposed to be because Hilary Mantel has just announced that it is looking ‘increasingly unlikely’ that the book would be ready. ‘It simply depends when it comes in…you know, publishing goes in seasons. If I can get it in (finished) early in the new year, it might very well come out later in the summer. The book may not appear until 2019,’ said Mantel. Interesting that literature has to bow to the vagaries of the market, even though both Wolf Hall, 2009, and Bring Up the Bodies, 2012 made Mantel the first author to win the Man Booker Prize for consecutive books. Even though the BBC created a marvellous, and much lauded, six-part adaption for television called Wolf Hall starring the brilliant Mark Rylance as Cromwell. I’d recommend it to anyone, save my friend who’s a stickler for the absolute facts.

I’ve been fascinated by Mantel’s exploration of the inner thoughts and feelings of the Machiavellian Cromwell. The ruthless mind, the complex machinations, the corridor wranglings, the manipulations in court – it makes House of Cards seem tame by comparison. I look forward to the last instalment which charts his final years, the fall from grace and ultimately his execution by beheading.