Bring Up the Bodies

Though I did enjoy the earlier Wolf Hall I found Bring Up the Bodies more readable and compelling.

Hilary Mantel paints intimate word pictures of Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, and especially Thomas Cromwell, struggling to make his way through the minefield of political intrigue at Henry’s court. Though it is against almost every principle he holds dear, Cromwell charts a course which one step at a time ultimately brings Anne Boleyn down.

Finding himself in an almost impossible situation, he agonizes over every decision, looking at it from many sides: legal, political, ethical, spiritual, and religious. Meanwhile not… show more.

This is historical novel writing at its very best.

Mantel was a prize-winning author known for a fine style, exhaustive research, and a perfect grasp of her very complicated group of characters. And Bring Up the Bodies is the sequel to her equally brilliant Wolf Hall, and once again, the fascinating Thomas Cromwell is at the center of it all.

Cromwell is a great character, brilliant, scheming, strangely loyal to his flawed king, and wildly imaginative. The story itself concerns Henry VIII's fight to rid himself of his queen, Anne Boleyn, whom he fought to have as his consort… show more.

Hilary Mantel’s trilogy following the life of Thomas Cromwell is absolutely peerless as far as historical fiction goes.

One of my favourite challenges of the genre is how to take a time and place that is completely unfamiliar, where characters are motivated by ideas and concepts that modern readers find strange, and yet still find that kernel of universal feeling that allows a reader to anchor themselves in the text.

This novel in particular does that perfectly, showing the desperate ambition and cunning of both Cromwell and Anne Boleyn.

The result is completely captivating – and means that the story… show more.

Although Wolf Hall is the better-known and lauded novel, my preference is for the second book of Hilary Mantel’s trilogy. The author’s focus is Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s ruthlessly efficient first minister who came to prominence after Cardinal Wolsey fell from grace for his failure to solve the King’s “Great Matter.”  I admit I’ve never warmed to Cromwell, although he has been praised by illustrious Tudor historians such as GR Elton. Certainly, he was instrumental in freeing the King of his papal shackles and all that followed in the wake of England’s break from Rome. That being said, the Cromwell… show more.

It is almost impossible to choose only one of Mantel’s exceptional Booker winning Cromwell trilogy but for me, this one just has the edge. The focus is on Anne Boleyn’s fall and the subsequent elevation of the ambitious Seymour brothers and their sister Jane. It is tightly plotted and energetic, reading like a thriller, with Cromwell and Anne locked in a silent battle for supremacy. Mantel’s writing and scene-setting are simply superb, her characters so real you feel you know them.

My non-fiction biography of Thomas Cromwell was inspired by Hilary Mantel’s stunning Wolf Hall trilogy. She transformed Henry VIII’s henchman from one of the most despised villains in history into a sympathetic hero: a self-confessed ‘ruffian’ who rose to become the most powerful man in England, next to his royal master, Henry VIII. This, the second book in the trilogy, is for me the most compelling and charts the seemingly inexorable rise and shocking fall of Anne Boleyn.