HILARY MANTEL: There has always been a mismatch between what Thomas Cromwell has meant to historians and what he has meant to the general public \u2014 and that\u2019s the case whether they\u2019re novel-readers or theatregoers or filmgoers. For some academics in the past, Cromwell has been nothing but a cynical hatchet-man: clever but destructive. There is a far more interesting, vital, creative figure that the great Tudor historian Geoffrey Elton uncovered \u2014 or, some people say, created. . .<\/p>\n
There are several problems with a biographer, which the novelist also shares. Cromwell\u2019s early life is mostly off the record, and it exists as a set of interesting traditions and almost folk tales rather than a set of verifiable facts. And, in the second phase of his life, when he\u2019s working for Cardinal Wolsey, he begins to come on the record; and then, in the third phase, as secretary to the King, and in effect Henry VIII\u2019s first minister for almost a decade, he doesn\u2019t just come on to the record, he is the record: his work is everywhere; his eye, his hand are everywhere.<\/p>\n
Paradoxically, that makes it difficult, because it\u2019s too big to pin down. He ranges across every department of government. Accordingly, biographers have tended to think of him in compartments; so, there\u2019s Cromwell and the Church, Cromwell and finance, and Cromwell and Parliament. And you readily see what happens. You can\u2019t section a human being like that. So, a sense of a man being in there vanishes.<\/p>\n
Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n Absolutely excellent article about Thomas Cromwell in the @ChurchTimes<\/a> https:\/\/t.co\/MkNauZNi2g<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Paul Monk (@Revd_Paul_Monk) August 3, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n