Hilary Mantel’s “Bring Up the Bodies”

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel won the Man Booker Prize in 2010. The sequel, Bring Up the Bodies, won the prize in 2012. Both books deserved the recognition.

I began Bring Up the Bodies with some trepidation. How could Mantel equal or surpass Wolf Hall? Could she sustain interest in the story of Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, and Henry’s chancellor Thomas Cromwell through a second book.

Yes, she could. And she did.

Wolf Hall is the story of the rise of Anne Boleyn, and what Henry VIII (and Cromwell) had to do to set Henry’s first wife Katherine of Spain aside, manage if not avoid the inevitable diplomatic issues, and stay with the good graces of the Pope. Cromwell did manage to find a way to set aside Henry’s first marriage, but the next two objectives were more elusive. Anne was expected to produce what Henry wanted most – a male heir.

What happens when she cannot produce that heir is the story of Bring Up the Bodies. (Both books, incidentally, were used to produce the BBC television series Wolf Hall, starring Damien Lewis and Mark Rylance.) Henry’s attention begins to turn elsewhere, primarily in the direction of Jane Seymour. Anne continues her role as queen as if nothing can affect her, including flirtations which may or may not have been innocent but will be made to look like treason.

Thomas Cromwell

The story, like that of its predecessor, is told from the viewpoint of Cromwell, the man who first served as the right-arm of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, who fails to get the annulment Henry wants from the Pope and is eventually cast aside as chancellor. Cromwell was one of the very few Wolsey supporters who remains true to the cardinal, and in Mantel’s story, he will ultimate wreak revenge on those who helped to bring Wolsey down. Including the queen.

Henry the VIII by Joos Van Cleve

Mantel does at least three remarkable things with her story. She captures both the broad spirit and the fine details of the time. She interprets the main events of what actually happened, using both exhaustive research and educated guesses (the historical record is not complete). And she takes the reader inside the head of Thomas Cromwell, so that we see the events unfold as he sees them, helps shape them, and sometimes directs them.

Hilary Mantel

The title, Bring Up the Bodies, has something of a double meaning. Officially, it was the phrase used to have prisoners at the Tower of London transported to Westminster for trial. But it also, in this story, refers to the ghosts which continue to haunt and even shape events – Cardinal Wolsey, the executed Thomas More, Cromwell’s own wife and daughters (who died of what was called the sweating illness), and many others. The past is always with us, the story says, and it can be ignored only at great peril.

Bring Up the Bodies is a stellar accomplishment by itself. Coupled with Wolf Hall, it is an accomplishment achieved by very few writers.

Related:

My review of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall.

Top photograph: The White Tower at the Tower of London.

Hilary Mantel’s “Wolf Hall”

Last fall, while on vacation in London, we tried and failed to get tickets to the London theater production of “Wolf Hall,” starring Nathaniel Parker as Henry VIII and Ben Miles as Thomas Cromwell. The play moved on to Broadway in New York with the same cast, and was staged in two parts. And then the BBC mini-series, starring Damien Lewis and Mark Rylance, aired on PBS (the trailer is below).

It was a wonderful production. I was inspired enough to read Tudors by Peter Ackroyd, the second volume in his History of England.

The plays and television program are based on the novel Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, the well-known U.K. novelist. It is the first book of a trilogy on Thomas Cromwell, the son of a blacksmith who rose to power in Tudor England, to become second only to Henry VIII himself. Wolf Hall won the Man Booker Prize in 2010. The second book in the trilogy, Bring Up the Bodies, won the prize in 2012. The third has not yet been published.

Thomas Cromwell was, at first glance, an unlikely candidate for career promotion. In Mantel’s story, he flees England at little more than 12 to escape a drunken brute of a father. He serves in the French army, eventually finds himself in Italy and connecting to the banking families. He finds his way to Antwerp, where he becomes a merchant. And then he returns to England, becoming part of that rising merchant class and London business class that was helping England break out of its medieval history into more modern times. He becomes a trusted advisor to Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, the Lord Chancellor in Henry VIII’s England. That is the backdrop to Wolf Hall.

Henry VIII by Hans Holbein the Younger (1536)    

That is the backdrop, yes, but not the story. The story is the intertwining of two stories powerful enough to stand alone but together the kind of event that changes nations – the royal succession, or Henry VIII’s obsession to produce a male heir to the throne, and the Protestant Reformation. As Cardinal Wolsey eventually fails to convince Pope Clement to annul Henry’s marriage to Katharine of Spain, he finds himself losing his offices, forced to leave London, and living in internal exile. Eventually he is facing arrest and execution – the powerful dukes and the Boleyn family want his head (not to mention his wealth).

The only Wolsey man to stand true to the cardinal in his troubles is Thomas Cromwell – and that is what ultimately commends itself to Henry VIII. Cromwell begins to work for the king, and his successes for Henry begin to propel him upward. He becomes the stage manager to allow Henry to put aside Katherine and marry Anne Boleyn – and it is a production involving church, foreign kings, Parliament, nobles, merchants and businessmen.

Hilary Mantel

Mantel paints each scene with rich, historic detail. The world of the Tudors comes alive. The people who populated that world – from Henry VIII to servants and priests – become three-dimensional people. Cromwell is relentless for the king, but he also has a heart, and tries to find ways to help people escape some of the worst consequences they face. People like Thomas More, Henry’s chancellor after Wolsey whom Mantel paints in a very different way than the saintly Thomas More of the 1966 Oscar-winning movie A Man for All Seasons.

Wolf Hall is a marvelous novel, so good that one soon forgets he’s reading fiction because this must be exactly the way all that Tudor history happened, right?

The writing, the story, the characterization, the plot -- they're all that good. This is historical fiction at its well-researched best.

Painting (top): Thomas Cromwell, oil and tempera on oak panel by Hans Holbein (1532-1534). National Portrait Gallery, London.