Wolf Hall: Hilary Mantel

[poliphilo]

When I've not been running round after relatives I've been hanging out in Hilary Mantel's version of Tudor England. It's very lovely in there. Deep and plush and full of birdsong and changing light-  cinematic as so many modern novels are. Our hero is renaissance strong-man and polymath Thomas Cromwell ( who I always had down as one of the great villains of English history) and the villain (insofar as there is a villain)  the sainted Thomas More-  here portrayed as a 16th century Hoover or Beria-  with a taste for getting up close and personal in the torture chamber. I like books that overturn orthodoxies.