| Thomas Cromwell |
BOOKS OF THE YEAR
REVIEW: JULIAN NOVITZON HILARY MANTELDangerously Good Company
Late in Wolf Hall, the first novel in Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell trilogy, a weary Cromwell briefly contemplates dying at his desk as the poet Petrarch did. He recalls the poet’s words:
between one dip of the pen and the next, the time passes: and I hurry, I drive myself, and I speed towards death. We are always dying – I while I write, you while you read, and others while they listen or block their ears; they are all dying.
At the close of the Mirror and the Light, Cromwell dies, if not at his desk, then at least not very far from it. Despite having fallen from King Henry’s favour, his days in the Tower of London are still spent in the king’s service, writing a detailed account of the negations he conducted for the hand of Anne of Cleaves. Having made the marriage, Cromwell’s memory and eye for detail are needed to unmake it, and before the last words of his account have dried on the page, Parliament will have drafted and debated the bill of attainder for his execution. Cromwell is condemned to die not by a trial of his peers but by the pen; a tactic that he himself has employed more than once. And when there are no more words left to write – no more letters, accounts, transcripts, or pleas – he is sent to the block.