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In the ruthless arena of King Henry VIII's court, only one man dares to gamble his life to win the king's favor and ascend to the heights of political power England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years, and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe opposes him. The quest for the king's freedom destroys his adviser, the brilliant Cardinal Wolsey, and leaves a power vacuum. Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell. Cromwell is a wholly original man, a charmer and a bully, both idealist and opportunist, astute in reading people and a demon of energy: he is also a consummate politician, hardened by his personal losses, implacable in his ambition. But Henry is volatile: one day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell helps him break the opposition, but what will be the price of his triumph? In inimitable style, Hilary Mantel presents a picture of a half-made society on the cusp of change, where individuals fight or embrace their fate with passion and courage. With a vast array of characters, overflowing with incident, the novel re-creates an era when the personal and political are separated by a hairbreadth, where success brings unlimited power but a single failure means death.
After hearing so much buzz for so long about this series, I decided to dive in and listen to the audiobooks. Overall, I thought the books were very good and lived up to the hype. I enjoyed that they were tales of the Tudors told from the point of view of Thomas Cromwell, someone who usually doesn’t have the spotlight.
I found Hillary Mantel’s Cromwell a compelling character. He was an ambitious self-made man, the abused son of a blacksmith who rose to become Henry VIII’s Principal Secretary and chief adviser (among other titles). In spite of his ruthless, power-hungry nature, he had a charming, witty, vulnerable side that appealed to me.
The first book, WOLF HALL, covers Cromwell’s rise to power and his involvement in Henry VIII’s divorce from Catherine. The second, BRING UP THE BODIES, is all about the downfall of Anne Boleyn and the hand that Cromwell played. Anything to stay in the king’s good graces!
This series brings the political intrigue of the Tudor court and all of the major players to life. There were some slow-paced and dry parts to the books, but for the most part, I was hooked. BRING UP THE BODIES was my favorite of the two, mainly because Anne Boleyn’s story is so fascinating to me. ( )
An interesting study into what happens when someone with supreme power surrounds himself with people who will do his will. No one to suggest something is a bad idea; no one to speak of ethical behaviour. Or more to the point, understanding what the consequences of disapproval are, given that everyone else has drunk the kool-aid. It makes one wonder whether there are any modern reflections of this story. ( )
I get it, I don't love it, but I can't argue that it isn't well done. I just need my historical fiction to be more engaging than an actual history book. The writing is excellent, and it's quite thorough as far as I can tell, but this isn't my time period or my preferred genre to begin with so I'm a little underwhelmed. ( )
Hilary Mantel sets a new standard for historical fiction with her latest novel Wolf Hall, a riveting portrait of Thomas Cromwell, chief advisor to King Henry VIII and a significant political figure in Tudor England. Mantel’s crystalline style, piercing eye and interest in, shall we say, the darker side of human nature, together with a real respect for historical accuracy, make this novel an engrossing, enveloping read.
A sequel is plainly in view, as we are given glimpses of the rival daughters who plague the ever-more-gross monarch’s hectic search for male issue. The ginger-haired baby Elizabeth is mainly a squalling infant in the period of the narrative, which chiefly covers the years 1527–35, but in the figure of her sibling Mary, one is given a chilling prefiguration of the coming time when the bonfires of English heretics will really start to blaze in earnest. Mantel is herself of Catholic background and education, and evidently not sorry to be shot of it (as she might herself phrase the matter), so it is generous of her to show the many pettinesses and cruelties with which the future “Bloody Mary” was visited by the callous statecraft and churchmanship of her father’s court. Cromwell is shown trying only to mitigate, not relieve, her plight. And Mary’s icy religiosity he can forgive, but not More’s. Anyone who has been bamboozled by the saccharine propaganda of A Man for All Seasons should read Mantel’s rendering of the confrontation between More and his interlocutors about the Act of Succession, deposing the pope as the supreme head of the Church in England.
Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall is a startling achievement, a brilliant historical novel focused on the rise to power of a figure exceedingly unlikely, on the face of things, to arouse any sympathy at all.
Thomas Cromwell remains a controversial and mysterious figure. Mantel has filled in the blanks plausibly, brilliantly. “Wolf Hall” has epic scale but lyric texture. Its 500-plus pages turn quickly, winged and falconlike... [It] is both spellbinding and believable.
Seagulls cry, smells of freshly baked bread infuse the air, and hungry children hawk inexpensive wares. Animals, too, enliven the tale with their presence at surprising moments: the Chancellor of England strokes a lop-eared rabbit with snowy fur, the horses of courtiers in conversation bend their necks and flick their ears, Cromwell makes a pet of a rough-coated cat with golden eyes.
Such touches lend a fresh dimension to historic scenes too often relegated to either dry or highly mannered recitations. “Wolf Hall” is sometimes an ambitious read. But it is a rewarding one as well.
But her book’s main characters are scorchingly well rendered. And their sharp-clawed machinations are presented with nonstop verve in a book that can compress a wealth of incisiveness into a very few well-chosen words. When Cardinal Wolsey speaks of the king to Cromwell, then his young protégé, he says: “If your chance comes to serve, you will have to take him as he is, a pleasure-loving prince. And he will have to take you as you are, which is rather like one of those square-shaped fighting dogs that low men tow about on ropes. Not that you are without a fitful charm, Tom.”
Mantel spoke in an interview recently of the need for writers to be ruthless in their pruning. Despite the crispness of the individual scenes, she does not seem to have taken her own advice to heart. The effect, sadly, is to turn a potentially outstanding novel into merely a commendable one.
Mantel is a prolific, protean figure who doesn't fit into many of the established pigeonholes for women writers, and whose output ranges from the French revolution (A Place of Greater Safety) to her own troubled childhood (Giving Up the Ghost). Maybe this book will win one of the prizes that have been withheld so far. A historian might wonder about the extent to which she makes Cromwell a modern rationalist in Renaissance dress; a critic might wonder if the narrator's awe at the central character doesn't sometimes make him seem as self-mythologising as his enemies. But Wolf Hall succeeds on its own terms and then some, both as a non-frothy historical novel and as a display of Mantel's extraordinary talent. Lyrically yet cleanly and tightly written, solidly imagined yet filled with spooky resonances, and very funny at times, it's not like much else in contemporary British fiction. A sequel is apparently in the works, and it's not the least of Mantel's achievements that the reader finishes this 650-page book wanting more.
This is a beautiful and profoundly humane book, a dark mirror held up to our own world. And the fact that its conclusion takes place after the curtain has fallen only proves that Hilary Mantel is one of our bravest as well as most brilliant writers.
'There are three kinds of scenes, one called the tragic, second the comic, third the satyric. Their decorations are different and unlike each other in scheme. Tragic scenes are delineated with columns, pediments, statues and other objects suited to kings; comic scenes exhibit private dwellings, with balconies and views representing rows of windows, after the manner of ordinary dwellings; satyric scenes are decorated with trees, caverns, mountains and other rustic objects delineated in landscape style.'
Vitruvius, De Architectura, on the theatre, c. 27 B.C.
Dedication
To my singular friend Mary Robertson this be given.
Dedicated to my sister Wendy with thanks and love for her unconditional acceptance and pride in what I do.
First words
'So now get up.' Felled, dazed, silent, he has fallen; knocked full length on the cobbles of the yard. His head turns sideways; his eyes are turned towards the gate, as if someone might arrive to help him out. One blow, properly placed, could kill him now.
Quotations
The Cardinal, a Bachelor of Arts at fifteen, a Bachelor of Theology by his mid-twenties, is learned in the law but does not like its delays; he cannot quite accept that real property cannot be changed into money, with the same speed and ease with which he changes a wafer into the body of Christ.
"You're sweeter to look at than the cardinal", he says. - "That's the smallest compliment a woman ever received."
It is surprising how international is the language of old men, swapping tips on salves for aches, commiserating with petty wretchedness and discussing the whims and demands of their wives.
"Tell us, Master Cromwell, you've been abroad. Are they particularly an ungrateful nation? It seems to me that they like change for the sake of it?" - "I don't think it's the English. I think it's just people. They always hope there may be something better."
Christ, he thinks, by my age I ought to know. You don't get on by being original. You don't get on by being bright. You don't get on by being strong. You get on by being a subtle crook; somehow he thinks that's what Norris is, and he feels an irrational dislike taking root, and he tries to dismiss it, because he prefers his dislikes rational.
He thinks of their wedding night; her trailing taffeta gown, her little wary gesture of hugging her elbows. Next day she said, "That's all right then." And smiled. That's all she left him. Liz who never did say much.
"Treaty of perpetual peace? Let's think, when was the last perpetual peace?"
There cannot be new things in England. There can be old things freshly presented, or new things that pretend to be old. To be trusted, new men must forge themselves an ancient pedigree, like Walter's, or enter into the service of ancient families. Don't try to go it alone, or they'll think you're pirates.
"My father always says, choosing a wife is like putting your hand into a bagful of writhing creatures, with one eel to six snakes."
They can stumble through a Latin prayer, but when you say, "Go on, tell me what it means," they say, "Means, master?" as if they thought that words and their meanings were so loosely attached that the tether would snap at the first tug.
"She has such good words. And she uses them all."
"They made the rules; they cannot complain if I am the strictest enforcer."
"Men say," Liz reaches for her scissors, "'I can't endure it when women cry' - just as people say, 'I can't endure this wet weather.' As if it were nothing to do with the men at all, the crying. Just one of those things that happen."
They asked Henry to turn his attention to the chief Plantagenet claimant, the nephew of King Edward and wicked King Richard, whom he had held in the tower since he was a child of ten. To gentle pressure, King Henry capitulated; the White Rose, aged twenty-four, was taken out into God's light and air, in order to have his head cut off.
"If you have been in the street in Paris or Rouen, and seen a mother pull her child by the hand, and say, 'Stop that squalling, or I'll fetch an Englishman,' you are inclined to believe that any accord between the countries is formal and transient. The English will never be forgiven for the talent for destruction they have always displayed when they get off their own island."
The cardinal always says that you can never get the king to write a letter himself. Even to another king. Even to the Pope. Even when it might make a difference.
'But I need a new husband. To stop them calling me names. Can the cardinal get husbands?' - 'The cardinal can do anything.'
There are some men, possibly, who would be fascinated by a woman who had been a mistress to two kings, but he is not one of them.
They are packing his gospels and taking them for the king's libraries. The texts are heavy to hold in the arms, and awkward as if they breathed; their pages are made of slunk vellum from stillborn calves, reveined by the illuminator in tints of lapis and leaf-green.
Wolsey will burn books ... He did so at St Paul's Cross: a holocaust of the English language, and so much rag-rich paper consumed, and so much black printer's ink.
The mellow brick frontage is smaller than he remembers ... These pages and gentlemen running out, these grooms to lead away the horses, the warmed wine that awaits them, the noise and the fuss, it is a different sort of arrival from those of long ago. The portage of wood and water, the firing up of the ranges ... he [had] worked alongside the men, grubby and hungry.... He stops at the foot of the great staircase. Never was he allowed to run up it; there was a back staircase for boys like him, carrying wood or coals. He touches the stone, cold as a tomb: vine leaves intertwined with some nameless flower.... She has led him to a closed door. “Do they still call this the blue chamber?” ... It is a long room ... The blue tapestries have been taken down and the plaster walls are naked.
In the ruthless arena of King Henry VIII's court, only one man dares to gamble his life to win the king's favor and ascend to the heights of political power England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years, and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe opposes him. The quest for the king's freedom destroys his adviser, the brilliant Cardinal Wolsey, and leaves a power vacuum. Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell. Cromwell is a wholly original man, a charmer and a bully, both idealist and opportunist, astute in reading people and a demon of energy: he is also a consummate politician, hardened by his personal losses, implacable in his ambition. But Henry is volatile: one day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell helps him break the opposition, but what will be the price of his triumph? In inimitable style, Hilary Mantel presents a picture of a half-made society on the cusp of change, where individuals fight or embrace their fate with passion and courage. With a vast array of characters, overflowing with incident, the novel re-creates an era when the personal and political are separated by a hairbreadth, where success brings unlimited power but a single failure means death.
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Haiku summary
How many Thomases? How many Annes? Enough for A Reformation? (thorold)
Hilary Mantel's character resurrection of Thomas Cromwell. (passion4reading)
Fast-paced, well-written political thriller. Twist? Set in Tudor times. (passion4reading)
Thomas Cromwell: from historical figure to man of flesh and blood. (passion4reading)
A court of bared fangs, Who will survive the scheming, In this hall of wolves? (hillaryrose7)
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I found Hillary Mantel’s Cromwell a compelling character. He was an ambitious self-made man, the abused son of a blacksmith who rose to become Henry VIII’s Principal Secretary and chief adviser (among other titles). In spite of his ruthless, power-hungry nature, he had a charming, witty, vulnerable side that appealed to me.
The first book, WOLF HALL, covers Cromwell’s rise to power and his involvement in Henry VIII’s divorce from Catherine. The second, BRING UP THE BODIES, is all about the downfall of Anne Boleyn and the hand that Cromwell played. Anything to stay in the king’s good graces!
This series brings the political intrigue of the Tudor court and all of the major players to life. There were some slow-paced and dry parts to the books, but for the most part, I was hooked. BRING UP THE BODIES was my favorite of the two, mainly because Anne Boleyn’s story is so fascinating to me. (