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As I was leaving Waterstones yesterday I caught sight of a copy of The Mirror and the Light displayed on a table with a bunch of other "modern classics". Dear God, but it's enormous! I doubt I'll ever read it.
I read the first two volumes of Mantell's Cromwell trilogy when they first came out. I admired them and enjoyed them but they sort of washed over me and I remember very little about them. Perhaps I simply wasn't paying enough attention.
But I have an appetite for well-researched historical fiction and I've started watching the TV version of the trilogy- and it's a marvel. Dare I say it's better than the books? Of course I dare, because who cares for my opinion anyway? Being a pedant, I can't help noticing anachronisms- like the 19th century monuments on the walls of unreformed medieval churches- but I recognise that an effort is being made and there's only much that can be done on a BBC budget. I particularly like how the clothes seemed lived-in- and how, for instance, Anton Lesser's Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of England, with his stringy chin and unhaven chin, presents like a bag lady in ratty furs and preposterous hats. The writing and acting are sublime. Is that pitching it too high? No, I'll stick by it. One understands the pressures and constraints these people are acting under. No-one is a hero and no-one is a villain. I've read that More is presented- in opposition to Robert Bolt and the Catholic church- as a bad guy, but he isn't. He's a man of principles (not at all for all seasons) and some of them are monstrous. Why he chooses to stick to them so resolutely is a mystery to all his well-wishers (and he has few if any actual enemies) and finally to himself.
More is dead now (at the end of episode four) and next for the chopping black will be Claire Foy's Anne Boleyn- a clever bitch who is trying to hold her own in a world of ruthless men who are all, also, trying to hold their own. One feels for her, as one feels for all these people, even for Damian Lewis's Henry, a man much betrayed and manipulated- and weaker than he'd have you think. To borrow a phrase from Rose Macaulay, "they were defeated"
I haven't yet mentioned Mark Rylance, but I will now. And I'll put an exclamation mark after his name. Like this,
Mark Rylance!
I read the first two volumes of Mantell's Cromwell trilogy when they first came out. I admired them and enjoyed them but they sort of washed over me and I remember very little about them. Perhaps I simply wasn't paying enough attention.
But I have an appetite for well-researched historical fiction and I've started watching the TV version of the trilogy- and it's a marvel. Dare I say it's better than the books? Of course I dare, because who cares for my opinion anyway? Being a pedant, I can't help noticing anachronisms- like the 19th century monuments on the walls of unreformed medieval churches- but I recognise that an effort is being made and there's only much that can be done on a BBC budget. I particularly like how the clothes seemed lived-in- and how, for instance, Anton Lesser's Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of England, with his stringy chin and unhaven chin, presents like a bag lady in ratty furs and preposterous hats. The writing and acting are sublime. Is that pitching it too high? No, I'll stick by it. One understands the pressures and constraints these people are acting under. No-one is a hero and no-one is a villain. I've read that More is presented- in opposition to Robert Bolt and the Catholic church- as a bad guy, but he isn't. He's a man of principles (not at all for all seasons) and some of them are monstrous. Why he chooses to stick to them so resolutely is a mystery to all his well-wishers (and he has few if any actual enemies) and finally to himself.
More is dead now (at the end of episode four) and next for the chopping black will be Claire Foy's Anne Boleyn- a clever bitch who is trying to hold her own in a world of ruthless men who are all, also, trying to hold their own. One feels for her, as one feels for all these people, even for Damian Lewis's Henry, a man much betrayed and manipulated- and weaker than he'd have you think. To borrow a phrase from Rose Macaulay, "they were defeated"
I haven't yet mentioned Mark Rylance, but I will now. And I'll put an exclamation mark after his name. Like this,
Mark Rylance!
