Especially in lockdown, when you can really get stuck in!

Good old Elton. I loved him.

Thank you for your review of The Mirror and The Light – which I haven’t read – but I’ve read about it, and heard a lot on the radio, and heard Anton Lesser’s elegant reading of the book. The strange rendering “He, Cromwell” puzzled me, but you are quite right – “He, Cromwell, touches a finger to the metal” gives quite us a different, suspended present to inhabit, than a simpler “Cromwell touches a finger to the metal”. And it is interesting that “we see the world entirely through Cromwell’s eyes” although the book is written in the third person. I would need to read the book to appreciate that.

Elton, and Mantel, and now (when we read his book) Diarmaid MacCulloch each reveal a new layer of Cromwell’s character, a fascinating process. You too, with your hope for a deeper understanding of the intensity of Cromwell’s “theological reality” hint at the need to really grasp the dangerous time in which he lived.

Not having read any of Mantel’s books so far, your review gives me an introduction which, as with all your reviews, makes me want to go and engage with the works. Your reviews are short, but subtle. You can handle a cliché without it appearing to be one, as with Cromwell’s “omelette”. And your choice of the word “shrouded” in paragraph fourteen, followed by “bury”, is far more telling than the more prosaic ‘hidden” and “hide” would have been.

I also like the way you have photographed the book without its cover, as well as with. I like to enquire underneath the dust jacket to see what kind of book I have in my hands. The most delightful recently has been Philip Pullman’s Book of Dust, book one of the trilogy – the hard cover spangled like miniscule stars.

On the question of the rise of nations, it’s not generally known that, at the time, the Pope restricted international trade by controlling what nation-states could do. Cromwell will have witnessed first-hand the frustration this caused merchants, who wanted free trade. By ridding England of Papal Supremacy, the path to free trade was cleared; although that path was not without obstacles in the first instance.

You make some very salient points! My downfall is to be more than a little sweeping. However, when you read the third volume, you will see what I mean: Mantel is making Cromwell’s role in history clear. There is a lot more in this book about the power of the aristocracy being pitted against Cromwell’s own family and proteges, and about his belief that he could indeed rise to the very top. Likewise, there is a great deal about the shape-shifting of fathers and sons.

I’m glad you enjoyed the review – thank you for your response!

Perhaps Tony Blair is a modern-day equivalent, not in terms of his religious belief, but in terms of believing that there are massive threats to world peace, and that the accumulation of vast personal wealth by campaigning about them is absolutely fine. Greta Thunberg has achieved international celebrity by campaigning about a huge threat to human existence, but so far seems reluctant to capitalise on it personally.

Yes, her depiction of Thomas More has been very controversial. Has he been wrongly lionised, though? Thomas More represented the forces of reaction, whereas Cromwell pushed Britain towards the forefront of mercantile progress, free from the control of the Pope – quite apart from other aspects of progress, such as parliamentary democracy.

Thanks, Jo.