itt WOLF HALL the book by hilary mantel and the upcoming hbo/bbc miniseries based on the same

October story in the Guardian

The actor Mark Rylance is to be reunited with the director of the television drama about the death of the weapons inspector Dr David Kelly for an "intensely political" £7m BBC adaptation of Hilary Mantel's Booker prize-winning Wolf Hall novels.

Peter Kosminsky, the award-winning director of a string of docu-dramas based on contemporary events – including Channel 4's The Government Inspector, which starred Rylance as Kelly – may at first glance appear an unlikely choice for a historical costume piece.

However, Kosminsky shares with Mantel a reputation for indepth research – the Wolf Hall author spent five years investigating the 16th-century historical background to her narrative on the grim political machinations of Henry VIII's court.

Rylance will play the main protagonist, the Tudor king's adviser Thomas Cromwell, in the six-part adaptation of Wolf Hall for BBC2, which is expected to be broadcast in 2015. The BBC will also broadcast the sequel Bring Up the Bodies and producer Company Pictures has an option on the as-yet-unpublished final book of Mantel's Tudor trilogy, The Mirror and the Light.

Wolf Hall follows Cromwell's career as he ascends from a lowly start as a blacksmith's son to becoming an indispensable ally of Cardinal Wolsey, succeeding him as Henry's VIII's chief adviser after Wolsey's downfall.

Kosminsky said: "This is a first for me. But it is an intensely political piece. It is about the politics of despotism, and how you function around an absolute ruler. I have a sense that Hilary Mantel wanted that immediacy."

love chapuys

catherine is incredible too

My most dear lord, King and husband,

The hour of my death now drawing on, the tender love I owe thou forceth me, my case being such, to commend myselv to thou, and to put thou in remembrance with a few words of the healthe and safeguard of thine soul which thou ougte to preferce before all worldley matters, and before the care and pampering of thy body, for the which thoust have cast me into many calamities and thineselv into many troubles. For my part, I pardon thou everything, and I desire to devoutly pray God that He will pardon thou also.

going to be sweet when anne... *finger across throat*

pampering of thy body

o_O

feel like there could def be more than one more book come on

bring us right up to present day, hil

i havent felt this way since the bourne movies that the artist shd be compelled by law to make a new one every year before theyre allowed to do anything else

i want her to finish this up and then we can get some books on other historical subjects

would like to see mantel on italian unification e.g. or one of the russian revolutions.

This fucking book

Spent all day glued to the couch ripping through this, LOVE it

Did you rip through because there wasn't any Project Runway this week? :D

lol no

I even ripped through it all day Sunday without turning on the TV once despite FOOTBALL
which is like O_O

FINISHED

need the sequel. goddamn that was a great book

2/3 of the way through Bring Up The Bodies

shit totally just shifted up a gear am literally planning my evening around reading this now
omg I can't even stand it
srsly how great is this

this is a cool way to learn abt history

― lag∞n, Wednesday, 6 June 2012 14:40 (1 year ago) Permalink

seriously considered calling in sick to read wolf hall last week

i read a place of greater safety and it's great

present continuous

im goin to this

http://www.wolfhall.co.uk/imgs/generic/Wolf-Hall-Bring-Up-The-Bodies.png

I have only read the first novel but it's very good, you could even say brilliant.

The stage version would be a good thing to go to.

i'm reading the first one now, it is brilliant, i'm very happy there's a sequel.

just finished second one

why can't all books be this good srsly

i guess i am the only one in the world who got bored by Wolf Hall

off with yr head

what happened to the hbo/bbc mark rylance series that was supposed to happen?

i guess i am the only one in the world who got bored by Wolf Hall

― nostormo, Monday, March 10, 2014

i got wolf hall for my wife, who devours books and loves historical novels. she didn't get through wolf hall at all. she said it was very well-written, but too cold. i'm going to try reading it sometime soon.

i love the way mantel writes but i am maybe not 100% on her characters? i had to put wolf hall down at least temporarily b/c t crom is like way too good at everything. he is the best at scheming and politickin and he's a bad dude in general. like he's jack reacher.

i mean obv this doesn't last forever given what ultimately goes down but does it ease up in the 2nd one?

Nah.

nope

I kinda missed rafe in the second one, call-me is a poor substitue (and obv crom knows it too)

not a spoiler btw, rafe's just not in it as much

He's getting busy, I hear.

what happened to the hbo/bbc mark rylance series that was supposed to happen?

― max, Monday, March 10, 2014 11:25 AM (46 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah really

its happenin

same script as the play?

play adapt: Mike Poulton

miniseries adapt: Peter Straughan

Filming will commence in Spring 2014 for transmission in 2015

thx!

twenty fifteeeeeeeeeen

that's too long ;_;

transmission

Keeping Cromwell's posse and all the people of court straight is the hardest part about these.

the court ppl i had the hardest time with, lord this & duke that

I still can't really differentiate between Norfolk and Suffolk! Folk them tbh.

totes

Like, one of them is blustery, and the other is... pious and blustery.

norfolk, thomas howard, is part of the boleyn power bloc. suffolk, charles brandon, is married to the king's sister and kind of lacking in real power because the king unhappy about it. please consult the handy vades mecum at the front of ea. volume

so i read her first novel after i'd read these -- 'every day is mother's day' -- and it's an interestingly different beast, reminds me of spark at her most merciless

one thing i saw somewhere about wolf hall: the idea that contemporary literary fiction can't admire or be impressed by its characters but has to hold them at arm's length or disdain them. i think the, like, marysueishness of thomas cromwell is a really interesting thing.

but yeah everyone in EDiMD is horrible; it fails most when it seems like it doesn't want to be even-handedly horrible but accidentally sympathises with them.

she's really good, though

but i fear that wolf hall could be extended indefinitely, so i can see why people could find it boring. well, not indefinitely (he has to die at some point), but certainly it hardly seems to have been tightly plotted (they don't get to wolf hall in the first volume) -- i sort of suspect she's winging it a bit, or was at some point. this is one of her many points of contact w george r r martin

the description of boleyn's final moments was v moving & sad

breaking up the wolf hall saga into three books seems like a decision made based on a place of greater safety, which is great but SO long, and flags in a bunch of different places, and would probably benefit from being crafted or structured as 2-3 sections that would each need to stand alone

that being said im not even sure the butb stands alone, as such

I need this to be at least 5 books.

someone put hilary on the blower, I need her to understand what I'm asking

I think three books is enough but we need to start campaigning for the next series to be about Oliver Cromwell.

I can't imagine how much work and research goes into books like these and if I were Hillary Mantel I'd want to spend the next few years drinking cocktails and writing pulp about teenage s&m vampires.