Mantel’s historic fiction manages to bring to life a period of history already swamped by decades of writing. Trying to create a fresh perspective on Henry VIIIs Tudor England seems an impossible task but her analytical narrative voice that floats between Cromwell and the omniscient, creates an anti-hero that consistently conflicts with the readers idea of morality. However, the real pleasure of this book derives from Mantel’s ability to create realistic space and time.

The voices of these children, small boys, calling out to each other from staircases, and nearer at hand the scrabbling of dogs’ paws on the boards. The chink of gold pieces into a chest. The susurration, tapestry-muffled, of polyglot conversation. The whisper of ink across paper. Beyond the walls the noises of the city: the milling of the crowds at his gate, distant cries from the river (87).

Character lists at the beginning of the novel can often fill me with dread and I won’t lie by saying I didn’t flick back to the beginning quite a few times to re-fresh my memory of who Stephen Vaughan was. However, the interesting twists and turns of the plot and character interaction, help keep the novel lighter than at times it could be. Especially during humorous exchanges between characters such as Cromwell and Eustache Chapuys. This has become the expectation for grand historical fiction and in an odd sense you feel an achievement by being able to recall all the characters.

The black timbered houses and laced neck pieces that have become synonymous with junior school Tudor lessons have taken a more sinister and notorious turn in Mantel’s imagination, one that urges us to read further into the complicated lives we thought we knew.

Georgia Smith