Bring Up The Bodies

‘My boy Thomas, give him a dirty look and he’ll gouge your eye out. Trip him, and he’ll cut off your leg,’ says Walter Cromwell in the year 1500. ‘But if you don’t cut across him he’s a very gentleman. And he’ll stand anyone a drink.’

By 1535 Thomas Cromwell, the blacksmith’s son, is far from his humble origins. Chief Minister to Henry VIII, his fortunes have risen with those of Anne Boleyn, Henry’s second wife, for whose sake Henry has broken with Rome and created his own church. But Henry’s actions have forced England into dangerous isolation, and Anne has failed to do what she promised: bear a son to secure the Tudor line. When Henry visits Wolf Hall, Cromwell watches as Henry falls in love with the silent, plain Jane Seymour. The minister sees what is at stake: not just the king’s pleasure, but the safety of the nation. As he eases a way through the sexual politics of the court, its miasma of gossip, he must negotiate a ‘truth’ that will satisfy Henry and secure his own career. But neither minister nor king will emerge undamaged from the bloody theatre of Anne’s final days.

I was lucky enough to get hold of an advance copy of Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies, which is the highly anticipated sequel to the Man Booker Prize winning novel, Wolf Hall. The Tudors were my favourite subject in history at school and so I was always going to enjoy these books but Anne Boleyn was always particularly interesting to me. Even without the sexified The Tudors series, it's pretty well agreed that Anne Boleyn caused a few problems for the royal family and was a bit of a flirt to say the least...

Bring Up the Bodies is about the downfall of Anne Boleyn and the arrival of Jane Seymour. The focus is, again, Thomas Cromwell - a fascinating figure: a master manipulator, political genius and smooth talker, Cromwell isn't someone you'd want to cross. He's a sad character, though, and you find yourself jumping from one opinion to another in his case because you feel sorry for him, you admire him and yet you are often almost scared by him.

For a story that is so well-known, Mantel brings a freshness and intelligence to it that makes the whole thing feel brand new. I always feel that Henry VIII was so unbelievable, so extreme, that he would make a fantastic book character and here Mantel proves it. You feel all the emotions you're supposed to - real excitement, fear, horror and sadness. There's emotion in Mantel's books that you don't get in the same way from the factual accounts. These are people, not just historical figures.

I'm a big fan of Hilary Mantel and her historical novels in particular are brilliant. A Place of Greater Safety about the French Revolution, was fantastic and this is no exception. If you are reading this thinking Wolf Hall was just a bit too difficult to get through, don't worry. This sequel is, in my opinion, much easier to read.

Whether you enjoy history or not, this is a brilliant read from a very talented writer.

8.5/10