Wolf Hall

by Hilary Mantel

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This book covers the early-mid part (I guess) of the reign of Henry VIII, from the perspective of Thomas Cromwell. Put another way, this is historical fiction about Thomas Cromwell's rise to power.

I learned about this from the New York Review of Books. I keep a list of books that sound interesting; this was on it. When I wandered into a used bookstore in Cochrane, wallet heavy with book money, I couldn't remember anything about it. I know I was especially keen on it, though, because when they said they had it, I was very excied to take it home and couldn't wait to start reading it.

Having just finished I just wanted to write down a few observations. As usual with my blogging, I don't really know why. I think I myself am the intended audience.


There is a moment a little ways in when Thomas Cromwell is remembering his learning of a "memory system" while he was in Italy. This system allows him to remember things by associating them with strong sensations.

The book itself is dripping with these sensations, and I think this is an amazing literary device-- these impressions are Cromwell's way of experiencing the world: smells, tastes, textures. Particular hues of red in Cardinal Wolsey's wardrobe or the deep glimmer of his ruby ring.

Sensation is formative to how he organizes information. Cromwell being always alive to these paints the world very vivid and close to the reader.

It was an "aha" moment for me-- I suddenly understood why I felt like I was on an acid trip.


There is an interesting convention where the book is, simply, always talking about Cromwell. Even when someone else is mentioned, a subsequent "he" may not refer to that someone.

"On the evening of More's death the weather clears, and he walks in the garden with Rafe and Richard."

"He" is Cromwell, not More, so this could be mildly confusing. This is a very gentle example.

Film Noir has a rule where you only see what the protagonist sees. Wolf Hall follows that same rule, but unlike Film Noir everything is described in the third person.

I had to get used to the idea that I was reading a first-person narrative, expressed in the third-person. We are mostly inside Cromwell's head, but the voice isn't Cromwell. In the first-person, the author would write "I" and it would be understood to be narrator-protagonist.

This isn't too unusual, I guess, but Mantel adopts a strong stylistic quirk where she does not introduce Cromwell into most scenes. Instead, she just states "he"-- and, again "he" often does NOT mean the most recent subject, so you frequently need to scry that she really means Cromwell instead of Henry VIII, for instance. Cromwell can be "he", where four other characters in a scene are all explicitly named, but not Cromwell himself.

For me it was a bit confusing, but this use of language is magnetic. Since there is throughout the entire novel an implied subject of Cromwell, everything hovers magically around him, always.

I'll call it a book in the third-first-person (thirty-first person?) point-of-view.


I am a baby-level reader and a history idiot, so to me this was a very challenging book. I didn't really know Henry VIII beyond a few broad outlines: "he chopped the head off many wives in succession because they didn't get pregnant, but it was he that was infertile, not they"— this is actually not really true and is a great simplification, though the spirit is partly there, and: "he couldn't get a divorce from the Pope so he founded the Church of England and put himself as head so he could just grant his own divorce"— this is basically true but the book shows how incredibly high the stakes were to actually do this.

The author might assume a bit more historical background on the part of the reader, but also: it works not really knowing your history, too, because the characters very clearly also don't know it. You can know all these weirdos and what they were supposedly up to at the time, or you can just ride along with them.

A funny moment for me, and example of how hard this book is: early-ish we are introduced to Hans Holbein, a painter. He gets about a paragraph. (I had read about him before, probably again in the New York Review of Books, so I knew a bit about him and enjoyed seeing him appear. "Oh yeah! I remember reading about this guy!") Hundreds of pages later, we read, hard cut from no framing context at all (I quote from memory): "That afternoon, Hans came by." Hans WHO? We saw him but once before that was like two hundred pages ago! So why, at minimum, say "Hans" and not "Hans Holbein"? Well, a totally good reason: Mantel is writing what Cromwell thinks, and he thinks "Hans". You, dear reader, can just deal. Anyways— this is a book that really truly does not hand-hold.

Utterly day-to-day personal in style, it moves fast with a full cast, half of whom are Thomases. Good luck!


After I finished, I read on Wikipedia that Mantel spent five years on research before writing this book and kept meticulous track of where everyone was at all times. This shows for sure-- and it was my introduction to this part of English history.

Tangent: I'm left curious about the space for "sloppy" historical fiction. Reality doesn't really write stories, we just write stories to try and fit reality, so we can make some sense of the chaos. A fictionalized account can fairly play very loose with reality to make a good story. Or rather what I mean is, it's an interesting idea to intentionally write historical fiction that is not really accurate, in order to create a better story. Not in the sense of exploring an alternate history, or making a particular point, just in the sense of freeing yourself as an author from the rigour of it all.

For instance: what if I wrote a book about Henry VIII but without knowing more than the rough outlines above? What if I simply did no research? What interesting stories could very poor half-knowledge of an historical topic yield?

From one perspective this is what actual "history" is, or can be— the victor writes a boiled down, black and white, simplified version of what happened, which can be easily related to/grasped, and which is not at all what actually happened. But this, like fiction that explores alternate histories, has an intent beyond "spin a good yarn!" (I am not saying history can't be plumbed with rigorous intent for a more objective truth; I just mean that a lot of history books are written to be convenient for their present-day context...)

So yeah: do you have some vague idea of the American Civil War? Why not write historical fiction and basically completely make everything up beyond the absolute broadest outlines. Offensive? Yeah I think so.


I follow a bit of a rule when I experience something narrative, be it a book or movie or game. Simply, I just try to experience the thing on it's own terms, first, and only after give it some context with metadata.

Our world is metadata-rich. If you talk about a famous movie with someone who cares about movies, for instance, there is a good chance they know some trivia about it. This context is really interesting, but our brains maybe have access to too much metadata these days. I think it can badly colour one's experience with art, to go in with too much context. Just start with the communciation artist to artee.

To me, though, absorbing this context or metadata after the fact is another thing altogether. The moment I realize I want to see a movie, read a book, play a game, I just sort of stop reading anything about it. But I don't mind reading a movie review after I have seen the movie. Let's compare notes.

(I did break this rule once during Wolf Hall. At one point Cromwell sees his own portrait by Holbein, and I really could not resist looking it up on Wikipedia. I think my imagined portrait was better, so I did a small disservice to myself, in the moment.)


But having finished it, now, and starting to devour that metadata, the whole historical context of the novel is such a rabbit-hole. I suppose I'll add one opinion, at least:

I do think that on the whole the portrayal of More is probably tilted. Maybe this is just to "spin a good yarn" but overall, there is a bright undercurrent of a new day dawning in Christendom, that new day coming to the people from Luther, Tyndale, the Bible in English. The novel makes some pretty convincing arguments to this end, and is stronger for embracing this Protestant optimism, or rather, stronger for painting Cromwell as embracing it: hoping, dangerously, to bring the King to a reformed Pope-free form of Christianity.

Wikipedia however (why is all my metadata Wikipedia? well, that's not hard: I am lazy and pressed-for-time...) has me a bit more convinced, on the whole, that More was probably not actually totally into torture for torture's sake. I am sure that, as an actual Catholic Saint, his Wikipedia article is itself probably a bit tilted in his favour, but nevertheless: the novel is clear that its fiction, so it has license to explore what it does. The Wikipedia article though somehow convinces me that More was not quite as he is fictionalized in Wolf Hall.

The novel does him some credit, painting him as principled, intelligent, and sometimes kind; but also lacking real humanity, blind to the genuinely horrific, mundane institutionalized evil and violence he inflicts on others.

I didn't dive too deeply on this, but anyways: it's interesting ground. Mantel is maybe trying to provide an alternate viewpoint not just on More but also on Cromwell, who seems to have been traditionally seen as a cold, calculating, and heartless schemer.

More was made a Catholic saint in 2000. Wolf Hall had about 5 years of research, was published in 2009 so we can say was started no later than 2004. Is it partly a response to that beatification?

Maybe this is in a sense "normal" history-- the reformation from the reformation's point of view? Building on the (allegedly baseless) "stories" passed around in protestant circles about Thomas More? I don't know.

I was raised evangelical so I certainly was given a rosy history of Bible translation, Luther, and so on, and the general outlines of this story accord with that. In other words, the story alleges Cromwell felt that way.

I'm glad I'm not as personally invested in all this, because it's a bit easier to sort-of enjoy the dissonance of the associated history, as it relates to Christianity, and also lets me better enjoy the incredibly adept storytelling. Just not bringing baggage.


Anyways-- if you have read this far, but have not yet read Wolf Hall, then I'm colouring your experience quite a bit. If you've read it already, and this is part of your post-read metadata feast, then great!

Last thoughts on this ramble:

The book made me appreciate all the more how horrifying and unsettling the idea of state-sponsored execution really is. Appalling and inhuman then, now, and always.

The dialogue is amazing, these nobles trade really good insults. And Cromwell's family trades on his wit too.

The book is a trilogy. I'm not exactly eager to read the next two books— maybe because the end point of Worf Hall, as a "story", is as good as any. But I am eager to read some of Mantel's other work, for instance on the French Revolution.

Final detail from Wikipedia: Mantel died in 2022. I wonder if I read about this book in her NYRB obituary.

June 27, 2025
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