It must be unusual for a reviewer to wax eager about the third book of a trilogy when only the first two have been published, but I will put my neck on the block and attempt just that. “Neck on the block” is an appropriate phrase because the setting for these books is the court of Henry VIII, where necks were severed routinely and, sometimes, clumsily. For more than five hundred years Henry’s court has continued to cast its spell, the patchiness of its records provoking historians into ever deeper research, and novelists into filling in the gaps with their imagination. The early Tudor period marks a boundary between the medieval and the modern: in so many ways different from our own times, it is in other ways so similar, with royalty, would-be royalty, misbehaving aristocrats, jumped-up civil servants, sex, greed, jealousy, religious intolerance, corruption and celebdom. Ring a bell?
Readers will no doubt have their own favourites among modern novelists who have tackled Henry’s court. Alison Weir and Philippa Gregory each have big fan bases, not to mention local author Malyn Broomfield, but my favourite by a wide margin is Hilary Mantel (b. 1952), or Dame Hilary as she has been since 2014. In her twenties Mantel suffered a painful and life-threatening illness first misdiagnosed as something psychiatric then later (and correctly) as endometriosis, a painful condition of the female reproductive system. Mantel’s writing invariably commands attention and, for the most part, admiration – though sometimes opprobrium too, with her pot-shots at the Duchess of Cambridge and Margaret Thatcher. Her first large-scale historical novel was A Place of Greater Safety (1992), set in the period of The Terror of the French Revolution. Had she gone on to write no more in the same genre, this remarkable work would probably have secured her reputation. But she did go on, and has now completed two novels exploring the life, deeds and misdeeds of Henry VIII’s chief fixer, Thomas Cromwell. The first, Wolf Hall, was published in 2009 and the second, Bring Up the Bodies, in 2012. Each won the Man Booker prize in its publication year, thus making Hilary Mantel the first woman two achieve two Bookers. The final book of the trilogy, The Mirror and The Light, is due for publication later this year.
So what, you may ask, is special about these books? What are the virtues that set Hilary Mantel apart?
I suggest three, and top of the list for me is her beautiful prose style. Here she is in a class of her own, her lyricism never failing to mesmerise readers throughout the 650 pages of Wolf Hall or the near-500 of Bring Up the Bodies. Perhaps I exaggerate to make my point, but Mantel’s prose is as mille feuille to the suet pudding of most other writers. Second, although by university training Mantel is a lawyer, she displays a historian’s thoroughness in research. What she conveys of Tudor England is convincingly rich in colour, sound and smell, yet it never overshadows her narrative thrust or her depiction of character. Thirdly, her skill with dialogue is remarkable, enabling her to create mood with sure-footedness and subtlety.
Her focal point is not King Henry but Thomas Cromwell. One might almost say she has a close relationship with him, referring, sometimes opaquely, to “he” or “him” as though she could be talking about nobody else. Cromwell’s year of birth was probably 1485, and his place of birth probably Putney. His father, a brewer and blacksmith, was violent and abusive, not infrequently in trouble with the law. Thomas disappeared some time in his teens to continental Europe, but very little is known about what he got up to there. The little we do know is that he became a mercenary soldier in France and Germany and a banker in Italy, and that he acquired formidable language and negotiating skills along the way. Back in London, some time in his twenties, he worked his way up to becoming right-hand man to Cardinal Wolsey, then the most senior churchman in Catholic England. Wolsey, to whom Cromwell was close, fell from grace in 1529, and Cromwell might then have dropped back into the gutter. Yet, with his egregious skills as a fixer and his enormous capacity for work, he again rose quite quickly to becoming a go-to man at Henry’s court. Through the king’s patronage, Cromwell acquired remunerative positions, wealth and eventually an earldom. He attracted the loathing of many at court. It is hard these days to appreciate how profound was the contempt in which the English upper crust held its social inferiors, and they never let Cromwell forget his base origins. But Cromwell was far cleverer than they, and supremely cunning with it; and his adversaries would have done well to remember that he never forgot or forgave a slight. Cromwell was crucial in aiding and abetting Henry in his protracted divorce from Katherine of Aragon, freeing the king’s way for his marriage to Anne Boleyn. Though initially Anne’s ally, Cromwell later became her ruthless opponent, continuing to support the king as she failed to produce a male heir. Manipulative as Anne was, Cromwell did it better, and in the end Anne paid with her head. These twists and turns of relationships and emotions, superbly recounted by Mantel, are the mainsprings that drive Bring Up the Bodies.
Little is known about Anne Boleyn’s early years. She was born some time between 1501 and 1505 – we are not sure. Her family was not top-drawer aristocracy but nevertheless well-to-do. Her father, Thomas, an ambitious snake in the grass if ever there was one, incessantly pushed for advancement for himself and his daughters, and was perfectly content to pimp the latter. Anne’s sister Mary had been Henry VIII’s mistress and had given him a son; and when Anne returned to England from her teenage education in the sophisticated French court, she too turned heads. Especially she turned King Henry’s head, sparking six or seven years of unrequited lust in him until he could marry her, in 1533. Anne, with her large dark eyes and forceful personality, brought with her a reputation as someone who had, in modern parlance, put herself about a bit. While to her admirers Anne was beautiful, to her detractors she was the goggle-eyed whore. As, later, the net drew tighter around her, several at Henry’s court were alleged to have enjoyed Anne’s sexual favours. One, her lutenist, Mark Smeaton, admitted it. Others denied it, but a scandalous allegation stuck that Anne had committed incest with her brother, George. The outcome of her brief trial for treason was never in doubt. Indeed, Henry had ordered the services of a French swordsman before Anne’s trial had even begun.
In characterising Anne, Mantel sticks to what is known, and especially to the plotting that went on, first to raise her up as Henry’s queen and then, so soon after, to bring her down. She depicts her neither as the goggle-eyed whore nor as a model of wifely chastity, but as a victim rather than a victimiser. Bring Up the Bodies closes with Anne’s execution, and with Cromwell at the height of his favour with the king. From this point on, the only way forward for Cromwell is down. The Mirror and the Light will tell us how he falls.
Mantel is at the top of her game, so it will be surprising if the final part of her trilogy is not as enthralling as the first two. Health permitting, she may go on to shine her light on a new historical period. Will her writing earn her further honours? Hard to say. To an onlooker the modern literary world may seem as ugly and as self-serving as Henry’s court, with Mantel’s chosen genre, historical fiction, not always regarded as serious literature. No matter, say I: Hilary Mantel is unquestionably an elite author, and I for one like her brand of elitism.
By Bob Young, First Published in January 2020
