Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies

Now a major TV series Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2009 Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2012 Winner of the Costa Book of the Year 2012 Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2013 Shortlisted for the the Orange Prize 2009 Shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award 2009 Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, both winners of The Man Booker Prize, in 2009 and 2012 respectively, are the first two instalments in Hilary Mantel’s Tudor trilogy. They have gathered readers and praise in equal and enormous measure. They have been credited with elevating historical fiction to new heights and animating a period of history many thought too well known to be made fresh. Through the eyes and ears of Thomas Cromwell, the books’ narrative prism, we are shown Tudor England, the court of King Henry VIII. Cromwell is a wholly original man: the son of a brutal blacksmith, a political genius, a briber, a charmer, a bully, a man with a delicate and deadly expertise in manipulating people and events. In Wolf Hall we witness Cromwell’s rise, beginning as clerk to Cardinal Wolsey, Henry’s chief advisor, charged with securing the divorce the pope refuses to grant. He is soon to become his successor. By 1535, when the action of Bring Up the Bodies begins, Cromwell is Chief Minister to Henry, his fortunes having risen with those of Anne Boleyn, Henry’s second wife. Anne’s days, though, are marked. Cromwell watches as the king falls in love with silent, plain Jane Seymour, sensing what Henry’s affection will mean for his queen, for England, and for himself.