Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

by Kate · Published February 28, 2025 · Updated February 28, 2025

To retrieve history we need rigour, integrity, unsparing devotion and an impulse to scepticism. To retrieve the past, we require all those virtues, and something more. If we want added value – to imagine not just how the past was, but what it felt like, from the inside – we pick up a novel. The historian and the biographer follow a trail of evidence, usually a paper trail. The novelist does that too, and then performs another act, puts the past back into process, into action, frees the people from the archive and lets them run about, ignorant of their fates, with all their mistakes unmade.

Hilary Mantel

Wolf Hall, 2009 Man Booker winner and number one on Guardian’s List of The 100 Best Books of the 21^st Century is an epic historical fiction novel I’m so glad I finally took the time to read. This formidable accomplishment serves as Hilary Mantel’s take on the Tudor world of Henry VIII and specifically her empathetic characterization of Thomas Cromwell, one of Henry VIII’s most trusted advisors. The first half of the book (at least) focuses on Henry VIII meeting and getting to know Anne Boleyn and Cromwell trying to find a way to help him divorce his then wife Katherine of Aragon* so he can marry Anne. That is the storyline, but what readers will celebrate is not so much the plot but Hilary Mantel’s ability to convey the times through character building. The following narrative quotes describing Cardinal Wolsey’s demise and Thomas Cromwell’s rise to power as King Henry’s right-hand man represents her genius in “setting the dead in motion.”

Day by day he takes his instructions from Wolsey at Richmond, and rides to wherever the king is. He thinks of the king as a terrain into which he must advance, with no seacoast to supply him.

He understands what Henry had learned from his cardinal: his floating diplomacy, his science of ambiguity. He sees how the king has applied this science to the slow, trackless, dubious ruin of his minister. Every kindness, Henry matches with a cruelty, some further charge or forfeiture. Till the cardinal moans, “I want to go away.” [p. 173]

***

Rafe says,” It is a good thing you are not like the cardinal.”

Indeed. The cardinal expected the gratitude of his prince, in which matter he was bound to be disappointed. For all his capacities he was a man whose emotions would master him and wear him out. He, Cromwell, is no longer subject to vagaries of temperament, and he is almost never tired. Obstacles will be removed, tempers will be soothed, knots unknotted. Here at the close of the year 1533, his spirit is sturdy, his will strong, his front imperturbable. The courtiers see that he can shape events, mold them. He can contain the fear of other men, and give them a sense of solidity in a quaking world: this people, this dynasty, this miserable rainy island at the edge of the world. [p. 484]

I appreciate as I read this novel the fact that Hilary Mantel has extremely high expectations for me. I love that! Much like George Saunders, she assumes that I will spend the time, energy, brainpower, and resources to fully comprehend her narrative. She writes for the reader who knows a bit of history so get ready to do some research if you are not familiar with the issues regarding laws, geopolitics, trade, and religion of the Tudor period. As you read the following quotes, note the historical references and vocabulary you may want to investigate further. Here is Cardinal Wolsey describing Henry’s first wife, Katherine of Aragon.

There is another story about Katherine, a different story. Henry went to France to have a little war; he left Katherine as regent. Down came the Scots; they were well beaten, and at Flodden the head of their king cut off. It was Katherine, that pink-and-white angel, who proposed to send the head in a bag by the first crossing, to cheer up her husband in his camp. They dissuaded her; told her it was, as a gesture, un-English. She sent, instead, a letter. And with it the surcoat in which the Scottish king had died, which was stiffened, black and cracking with his pumped out blood. [p. 28]

In the next quote, Thomas Cromwell has just come home from a visit with Cardinal Wolsey and is aware of the delicate situation regarding Katherine, King Henry, and Anne Boleyn. Imagining the worst for Cardinal Wolsey who refuses to consider an annulment of Katherine and the king’s marriage, he “formulates a denial” in his mind “for whom it may concern”:

“His Grace the cardinal wholly rejects any imputation that he has sent an evil spirit to wait upon the Duke of York. He deprecates the suggestion in the strongest possible terms. No headless calf, no fallen angel in the shape of a loll-tongued dog, no crawling pre-used winding-sheet, no Lazarus or animated cadaver has been sent by His Grace to pursue his Grace: nor is any such pursuit pending.” [p. 30)

Narrative idiosyncrasies in Wolf Hall challenge each of us to read carefully and to reread for clarification. For instance, in the narrative, we see the world largely through Thomas Cromwell’s eyes; sometimes he is presented through an omniscient third person and sometimes in another voice form. Often Cromwell is referred to as just ‘he’ but then so are others in the same paragraph. It takes some revisiting to determine which “he” is the referent. For instance, in the following paragraph, one might assume that “he lounges” refers to the port officer.

He sees three elderly Lowlanders struggling with their bundles and moves to help them. The packages are soft and bulky, samples of woolen cloth. A port officer gives them trouble about their documents, shouting into their faces. He lounges behind the clerk, pretending to be a Lowland oaf, and tells the merchants by holding up his fingers what he thinks a fair bribe. “Please,” says one of them, in effortful English to the clerk, “will you take care of these English coins for me? I find them surplus.” Suddenly the clerk is all smiles. The Lowlanders are all smiles; they would have paid much more. When they board they say, “The boy is with us.” [p. 13]

Yet if you go back through the text and visualize the scene, you realize that “he lounges” refers to Cromwell… who is in the process of winning over the Lowlanders so that they will include him with their family (“the boy is with us”) when they board the boat. This short paragraph, by the way, offers much insight into our Cromwell’s character! He was a schemer even at fifteen years!

Chapters in the book are lengthy, with many subchapters following Thomas’ travels. He speaks with hundreds of people a day, at different times and in various places. Many of the characters with whom he discusses the issues are also named Thomas (e.g., Avery, Wolsey, More, Wriothesley, Audley, Boleyn, Howard, Wyatt, Cranmer, Seymour), which makes the narrative even more tricky but fascinating at the same time.

Some of my favorite scenes occur at Austin Friars where Cromwell lives with his family. Hilary Mantel depicts Thomas Cromwell as having huge respect and love for his children both natural and adopted. We move from the courts to the streets to business to international relations to the warmth and stability of his home. These scenes are comforting and lyrical and give the reader a break from the backstabbing and intrigue of the court. Here is Cromwell regarding his son Gregory:

He is conscious that his son is taller than he is: not that it takes much. He steps sideways, though only in his mind, to see his boy with a painter’s eye: a boy with fine white skin and hazel eyes, a slender angel of the second rank in a fresco dappled with damp, in some hill town far from here. He thinks of him as a page in a forest riding across vellum, dark curls crisp under a narrow band of gold; whereas the young men about him every day, the young men of Austin Friars, are muscled like fighting dogs, hair cropped to stubble, eyes sharp as sword points. He thinks, Gregory is all he should be. He is everything I have a right to hope for: his openness, his gentleness, the reserve and consideration with which he holds back his thoughts till he has framed them. He feels such tenderness for him he thinks he might cry. [p. 489]

I love the level of trust and respect Hilary Mantel awards her readers and I think it has earned her an equal amount of admiration and loyalty which will continue long after her death in 2020 at age seventy. Her death has saddened many and prompted an outpouring of tributes from cultural and literary institutions like the Royal Shakespeare Company, the bookstores Foyles and Waterstones, the Booker Prize, and the London Review of Books, where she was a frequent contributor. Daniel Mendelsohn stated that “She developed a way in ‘Wolf Hall’ of making you feel like you’re almost overhearing the thoughts of Thomas Cromwell, rather than flatly describing events. It’s very much a psychological novel. She manages to combine a kind of stylistic lushness with an absolutely razor sharp precision in her prose, which don’t always go together.”

Pay Dame Hilary Mantel a tribute…read Wolf Hall!

The following resources provide further analysis and information regarding the Tudor era:

Wolf Hall Companion by Lauren MacKay aims to “enrich the reader’s understanding of Mantel’s works and the history beneath it.” [p. 9]

The Reformation: A History by Diarmaid MacCulloch

Jane Boleyn: The Infamous Lady Rochford by Julia Fox

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