Forgive the state of the cover on this much borrowed library book, but it should be no surprise to find it in this condition as it's almost too heavy to hold. There are almost 900 pages to wade through, and it took me the full three weeks of library loan time to get through it, but it was certainly worth it.
This is the third and last of the books Mantel wrote on the life of Thomas Cromwell, and begins at the time of the execution of Henry VIII's second wife Anne Boleyn, and runs through to the King's divorce from his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. All through that period, Thomas Cromwell continued to rise through the ranks of parliament and the royal court until he became so great he was even seen as a threat to Henry's throne. After five hundred years, it is hardly a spoiler to say that things didn't end well for him and the book ends as Cromwell is executed for treason.
Hilary Mantel conveys every detail of life in the court of Henry VIII, and although many of the facts are well known, she has had to create the personalities and write scripts for all the conversations that could have lead up to great moments in history. The sheer scale of the research that went into writing this book must surely have taken years of work and sets the benchmark for any other writers who attempt to cover the same events. It's not just an account of who did what to whom, it's the clothing, the food, pets and children. Everything is there and the whole panorama comes comes to life with all the sounds and smells of different settings from a blacksmith's forge to the King's Privy Chamber.
The more I think about the amount of effort that went into the construction of the trilogy, the more admiration I feel for Hilary Mantel. How on earth would you start on a project like this? Do you have to start at the end when Cromwell is executed and follow all the threads backwards to his lowly beginnings? All the lives of the people in court are interwoven with secret plotting and clandestine efforts to gain favour with the King, and people clearly swap political sides to gain advantage. To make those historical events credible in a fiction story, it is necessary to create characters capable of certain acts, and if they suddenly do something out of character the reader has to understand how that could come about.
Everything about the writing feels true to history and there are no modern behaviours slipped in to make the text more acceptable to readers who may not be familiar with the Tudor period. I have come across films and books that make historical characters behave in ways we would normally associate with our current Generation X, and that might fit their story, but it's not an accurate depiction of historical life.
Hilary Mantel is the Queen of historical writing and very few authors will ever reach her very high standards.
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