The rebellion known as the Pilgrimage of Grace rises in the North, unhappy with reforms in the Church, and is put down. The Plantagenet Pole family conspires against the crown. Jane Seymour becomes queen, has a son, dies. Even Diarmaid MacCulloch’s excellent biography of Cromwell (which appeared after Bring Up the Bodies, and which Mantel praises generously on its dust-jacket) struggles to hold together all the different national and international and secular and religious events of these years. But setting a novel in the years between 15 is a tough ask. The Mirror and the Light has all the dark witty glitter of the earlier volumes in the trilogy. It covers a little more than four years of historical time, from the execution of Anne Boleyn in May 1536 to (no spoilers here, since this is where the whole three-act tragedy has always been heading) Cromwell’s execution in late July 1540. Eight years after that the 883 pages of The Mirror and the Light dropped with a thud through my letterbox – some letterboxes may require modification to accommodate its girth. Three years later came Bring Up the Bodies, which in 410 pages created a tight tragic narrative about Cromwell’s part in the fall of Anne Boleyn over the single year 1535-36. Its 650 pages covered the years from roughly 1500 to 1535. Wolf Hall, the first instalment of Hilary Mantel’s trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, appeared more than a decade ago.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |