Wolf Hall

"Explores what it means to live by a code when you are at political and personal risk."

"Winner"

"Yes. It may seem curious to choose a work of fiction, but Hilary Mantel possesses an extraordinary historical imagination and her recreation of the world of the 1530s through the eyes of Thomas Cromwell is, I think, utterly convincing. Cromwell, of course, is More’s contemporary and his nemesis. One of the fascinating things for me about this book is that in exploring Cromwell’s world, Mantel is also looking at the mentality of the new men – the lawyers, financiers and administrators – who helped to forge Tudor England. Cromwell was an exceptional man, but he also exemplified a type of royal servant who was able to multitask, to turn their hands to anything from finance to espionage to government. These were the kings of men, in fact, with whom Henry VII surrounded himself. Chief among the new men of Henry VII’s reign are the likes of Richard Fox and Thomas Lovell who are Thomas Wolsey’s mentors – Wolsey then, of course, becomes Cromwell’s mentor. Although Mantel’s portrait of Cromwell is fictional it has, I think, a real truth about it. It has this wonderful quality of bringing to us in a very immediate way a world that is very strange, very distant from our own."

"Hilary Mantel breathes life into history. You see the ruthlessness of Tudor society and you see the parallel with politics and power today. She just has an incredible way of making you smell and touch and feel everything. She brings alive the world and the fear: how easily people’s lives were expendable—one small thing and they were gone. In the first few books, we don’t really see much of Henry VIII, but we see the effects of Henry. It’s very clever the way that’s done. We see how Thomas Cromwell has to really work things to keep his power and keep his riches. As I said, I felt a lot of sympathy for him, and you see the change in his character through the three books. She manages to do something that I wouldn’t necessarily rush to, which is you’ve got real people—who did exist—but we’re meeting them through fiction. She did a tremendous amount of research, but even so they’re obviously not who they are—because she didn’t know them. As a writer, I felt it was hats off to her. I don’t know how she did it, really. The way she got all the detail, did all that research but wore it so lightly. I forgot that she was a contemporary writer. I could have been reading something that was a journal of the times, it felt so real. It’s so clever how she uses the language. You’re not bogged down with the way they might have talked, but you have the rhythm of the language."

"I love everything Hilary Mantel writes. She writes really dark things – historical novels and contemporary novels, they’ve all been extremely good. She’s got a real sense of other life out there and she weaves it brilliantly into her retelling of life as we live it. This is the first time she has taken on the hugest moment in British history; she’s gone from glimpses and cameos into this centre stage thing. The Tudor monarchy has a big moment with England leaving the Church of Rome for love – that’s the moment every film and television writer is interested in. She turns it upside down. The idea that we’ve all held to be true is that Thomas More was the good guy, the man with the principles, who was prepared to die for them. He stood by his Catholicism and resigned from being Henry VIII’s servant and wouldn’t go with the change in church. Whereas Thomas Cromwell, who came afterwards, we’ve tended to believe that he was a bad guy. There’s a nasty picture of him by Holbein looking very thuggish, with slitty little eyes. She takes this Thomas Cromwell, who we think of as the bad guy, as her hero. Not an out-and-out hero but he is a nuanced character and she sort of remakes him as a human. She does re-create this sense of unexpectedness and threat and how is it going to end? Mostly we are too familiar with this story, we’ve lost that sense of how is it going to end?, so it’s very fascinating and very modern. Thomas Cromwell is a boy from the gutter whose dad was a drunkard from Putney and he sort of arrived by his own merits. Anne Boleyn is this hugely ambitious girl, not beautiful but bug-eyed and calculating like a sparrow on speed. All the ladies pinch and push and all the aristocrats are these puffed-up fools who are cushioned by their sense of entitlement. Cromwell has ten times their brain power and is sly. He might look like a thug on the outside but he’s smarter than you think; he can outwit them and run rings round them. Yet unexpectedly he has this gift of compassion and he is able to look at people and pity them. By reinvestigating Thomas Cromwell she has managed to shed a whole new light on the story and her telling of it is very plausible as well."

"“Wolf Hall,” by Hilary Mantel. It was a marvel."

"My favorite writing today: Hilary Mantel. She has that same Tolstoyan ability to make the odd and faraway worlds her characters inhabit feel like they matter to us."

"The story of Henry VIII and his chief minister, Thomas Cromwell; the country's breaking away from the papacy, and the creation of the Church of England."

"Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall"

"But the last novels I read were Hilary Mantel’s “Wolf Hall” and “Bring Up the Bodies,” both of which I enjoyed tremendously. So, let’s just say that Mantel is my favorite living novelist?"

"Nothing in the last few years has dazzled me more than Hilary Mantel’s “Wolf Hall,” which blew the top of my head straight off. I’ve read it three times, and I’m still trying to figure out how she put that magnificent thing together."

"I finally read Hilary Mantel's "Wolf Hall" this summer. (Sometimes, when everyone is reading a book, I avoid it like it's a trendy restaurant. Now, 10 years later, I can't find anyone to talk about it. I sure hope there's a sequel.)"

"across Hilary Mantel's Thomas Cromwell books, the flawless trilogy beginning with Wolf Hall, we have an unsurpassed account of midlife."

"I loved "Gilead" and "Wolf Hall," which is a staggering achievement."

"I enjoyed Hilary Mantel’s “Bring Up the Bodies,” almost as much as I enjoyed its predecessor, “Wolf Hall.”"

"A brilliant take on politics through historical fiction about Thomas Cromwell in the time of Henry VIII. And it explores what it means to live by a code when you are at political and personal risk."