{"id":8611,"date":"2020-10-28T08:40:18","date_gmt":"2020-10-28T12:40:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8611"},"modified":"2020-10-28T08:40:18","modified_gmt":"2020-10-28T12:40:18","slug":"the-mirror-and-the-light","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8611","title":{"rendered":"The Mirror and the Light"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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In 2009, British author Hilary Mantel published Wolf Hall<\/a><\/em>, the first book in her trilogy about Henry VIII\u2019s powerful counselor, Thomas Cromwell (1485-1540). I wasn\u2019t surprised that year when it won the Booker Prize, Britain\u2019s top literary award. Three years later, part two of the trilogy, Bring Up the Bodies<\/a><\/em>, won the Booker again\u2014making Mantel the first British writer to win more than once. Eagerly, I\u2019ve waited and waited for part three.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Mirror and the Light<\/a><\/em> was published earlier this year and, though it made the Booker longlist, it\u2019s not on the shortlist. That seems more in the spirit of giving another author a chance than a critique of this new volume. It follows Cromwell in his final years, and, because I knew how it would end, I read its 750-plus pages in spread-out batches, extended my association with the protagonist and delaying the inevitable. I like to think Mantel felt the same reluctance for the story to end, accounting for the long wait.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thomas Cromwell was the son of a violent, ill-educated blacksmith from the London suburb (then) of Putney, who rose to have extraordinary power in King Henry\u2019s court. He had no army of his own, no particular following. Other than a few close allies, mostly among his family, the nobility, in fact, hated him and his influence. What he had in abundance was political acumen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He made Henry a rich man and extended the king\u2019s power and authority. He engineered the annulment of his marriage to his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, and his marriage to his second, Anne Boleyn. When Anne declined in royal favor, Cromwell again aided the king in ridding himself of an unwanted wife and placed Jane Seymour (probably the one of Henry\u2019s six wives he loved best) in Henry\u2019s path. After Jane’s untimely death, he negotiated with the German princes for a marriage to Anne of Cleves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there was so much more to Cromwell than bedroom politics. He oversaw the dismantling of Church properties, as he and Henry established the king as the head of the Church of England, not the Pope in Rome. He maneuvered against the Spanish, the French, and the Holy Roman Empire to protect his king and further his interests. In a nutshell, he saw the future and England\u2019s role in it, laying the groundwork for a modern nation led by skill and intellect, not birthright.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mantel\u2019s trilogy benefits from the tumultuous times in which Cromwell lived. But beyond the inherent drama of the story, her books are an astonishing feat of imagination. In no aspect of his life is Cromwell dealt with superficially. He is a wholly imagined person, with a chess-player\u2019s ability to think many moves ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the centuries, other chroniclers have portrayed him as ruthless and ambitious\u2014a characterization his enemies among the nobility would have spread about\u2014Mantel\u2019s books employ the skills of a mind-reader, making him a person of much greater depth. His enemies claimed he wanted to be king, but in her telling, he wanted only to serve his king.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bottom line? Any author who can help you know so intimately and care so deeply about a person who died almost 500 years ago has accomplished something indeed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2009, British author Hilary Mantel published Wolf Hall, the first book in her trilogy about Henry VIII\u2019s powerful counselor, Thomas Cromwell (1485-1540). I wasn\u2019t surprised that year when it won the Booker Prize, Britain\u2019s top literary award. Three years … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"The Mirror and the Light - The award winning immersive trilogy about Henry VIII's chief counselor, Thomas Cromwell ends. What a remarkable feat of author imagination!","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[265,61,366,40,266,126],"tags":[334,335,1762],"class_list":["post-8611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biography","category-character","category-drama","category-fiction","category-history","category-reading-2","tag-hilary-mantel","tag-thomas-cromwell","tag-tudor-england"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2eT","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8611"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8611\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8614,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8611\/revisions\/8614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}