The Nature of Things

Well, we knew how it was going to end, didn't we? Because, in spite of what you might have heard from a certain orange blowhard, facts are immutable and history cannot be rewritten. And so we knew that Thomas Cromwell's road with all of its convoluted machinations would one day lead him to an appointment with the ax. But if we hadn't known that we might never have guessed it at the beginning of The Mirror and the Light , Hilary Mantel's third and final volume on the life of Cromwell. It is May 1536 and Cromwell is riding high.  Mantel picks up the story just as Anne Boleyn has been beheaded by the executioner brought in specially for the purpose from Calais. Cromwell is a witness to the execution and afterward speaks with the executioner and admires his sword of Toledo steel that separated head from body. Then he goes to breakfast with those who had wanted Anne disposed of. Anne had to be gotten rid of because Henry had tired of her and had lost patience with waiting fo...

The latest major award to be given in this season of literary prizes was the Man Booker which was announced yesterday. And, wonder of wonders, it was given to an author and for a book that I had actually read and loved. Hilary Mantel won for Bring Up the Bodies , the second in her three book series about Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII's chief minister. I thought it was a wonderful book, even better than Wolf Hall , the first in the series which also won the Man Booker for 2009.  (My review is here. ) Mantel is, of course, an amazing writer of historical fiction. She brings the past to life and makes her characters fully informed human beings, not just cardboard cutouts. She has even managed to make Thomas Cromwell, who has been somewhat notorious for his Machiavellian manipulations in Henry's court, into a rather sympathetic character. We can begin to understand just what motivated him and perhaps what he had hoped to achieve as minister. Now that she has brought us to this point...

I took Hilary Mantel with me on vacation last week. She proved to be a fascinating companion. I had read Wolf Hall , her Man Booker Prize-winner, in 2010 and enjoyed it immensely, even though I was sometimes annoyed by Mantel's eccentric punctuation and her often failing to enumerate who "he" was in her telling of the story. Usually, it would be Thomas Cromwell, but not always. It was sometimes confusing. In Bring Up the Bodies , she seems to have addressed my quibbles or maybe I've just gotten used to her style of writing. Maybe a little bit of both. This book follows the downfall and execution of Anne Boleyn and the Master Secretary Thomas Cromwell's part in it. Cromwell was Henry VIII's right-hand man. Henry spoke his desire and Cromwell made it reality. When he wanted to get rid of his first wife Katherine so that he could marry his inamorata Anne, Cromwell made it possible. But at the opening of this book in 1535, Anne and Henry have been married for t...