Tag Archive: Thomas Cromwell


CROMWELL KEEPS HIS HEAD IN WOLF HALL

Filed under: Books, Television — Leave a comment
January 23, 2015
Generics

Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell

We are still only in January, but the BBC adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall is already sure to be one of the year’s TV highlights.

Costume dramas have long been the Beeb’s stock in trade and on the strength of episode one (broadcast on BBC Two on 21st January) this looks to one of their best for a long while.

It almost goes without saying that the acting is superb and I was particularly impressed by Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell.

What makes his performance so riveting is that, although he not physically imposing, he quietly manages to fill the screen and make you understand how such a man could have risen from humble beginnings , as the son of a blacksmith, to be one of the most influential figures in Britain.

The drama has a contemporary resonance in that you can well see how Cromwell’s instinctive Machiavellian skills also have a modern-day application. Continue reading →

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Henry VIII’s body count

Filed under: Books, Fiction, Gender — Leave a comment
November 10, 2013

BRING UP THE BODIES by Hilary Mantel (Fourth Estate, 2012)

220px-bringupthebodiesI enjoyed this historic novel but didn’t find it quite as enthralling as Wolf Hall. Possibly this is down to the fact that I knew more what to expect but also could be because Thomas Cromwell seems less Machiavellian this time around. I missed the fact that he had no intellectual equal to play off against. Thomas More fulfilled this role in Wolf Hall but, by the time the sequel starts, More has gone the way of many others by being executed.

More’s fate served as a reminder that no one was free of the threat of public execution simply for disagreeing with the royal policy. An abrupt end hung over anyone who falls out of favour with Henry or the church, which in England, after a rejection of papal rule from Rome, amounted to the same thing.

The novel begins in 1535 with a hunting scene and “riot of dismemberment” and ends a year later in similarly bloody fashion with human victims.

Cromwell is well established as Henry’s trusted advisor but is under no illusions that, for the most part, he is treading on thin ice. One false step could prove fatal.

Henry VIII & Anne Boleyn - the beast and the beauty.

Henry VIII & Anne Boleyn – the beast and the beauty.

His big headache is Anne Boleyn who like her predecessor, Katherine of Aragon, is unable to produce the male heir Henry so desperately craves. The impatient King has already lined up plain Jane Seymour as her successor.

Anne’s downfall is further assured as rumours abound of her unfaithfulness with a string of male suitors and it is even said that she had incestuous relations with her own brother George.

Hilary Mantel does not claim authority for her version of events, admitting that her work is a speculation based on the extant, and often contradictory, historical evidence. In her author’s note, Mantel admires Anne as “a mercurial woman, elusive in her lifetime”; but her willful nature also made her a ticking time bomb.

Cromwell is depicted as an equally complex character who the author describes as “sleek, plump and densely inaccessible”. He meteoric rise to become the King’s secretary was due to his skills in diplomacy and ability to play his cards close to his chest.

Cromwell is respected for his “indefatigible attention to England’s business”. He is ruthless when he needs to be but never reckless. The suggestion is that he helped refine Henry’s bull in china shop technique but knows that the King has such a bloated ego he can’t abide being wrong: “He doesn’t want people who say ‘No, but….’ ; he wants people who say ‘Yes, and….”.

This is another fine novel that entertains while plugging the numerous gaps in my knowledge of English history.

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THE WOLF OF WOLF HALL

Filed under: Books, Fiction, Politics — 1 Comment
September 3, 2013

WOLF HALL by Hilary Mantel (Fourth Estate, 2009)

Hilary-Mantel-Wolf-HallHistory has never been my strong point. The sum total of what I recall from lessons about Henry VIII at high school are that (a) He had six wives  (b) He was obese and (c) He was instrumental in bringing about the dissolution of the monasteries.

This is not exactly a vast sum of knowledge about a reign that lasted almost 38 years until his death in 1547.

Actually, there’s not a massive amount of specific information about the life of the king in this fictionalised account covering the period 1500 – 1535.

The focus of the story is Henry’s fixer in chief Thomas Cromwell who rose from humble beginnings to become the most powerful man in England. Like Winston Wolf in Pulp Fiction, he’s a a problem solver and master tactician. His diplomacy and keen intellect is such that you can well understand why Henry says  “I keep you, Master Cromwell, because you are as cunning as a bag of serpents”. Continue reading →

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