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

The only one that's really stuck with me was Wolf Hall. Bring Up The Bodies felt too short, and The Mirror & The Light too long. Need to re-read all three one of these years.

Watching now. Need to read the books to see how they handle Cromwell's stubborn silences, according to the show his favorite weapon.

We are heartbroken at the death of our beloved author, Dame Hilary Mantel, and our thoughts are with her friends and family, especially her husband, Gerald. This is a devastating loss and we can only be grateful she left us with such a magnificent body of work. pic.twitter.com/d8bzkBBXuH

— 4th Estate Books (@4thEstateBooks) September 23, 2022

One of the greatest British authors of our time.

70 is not old nowadays. But I'm not so surprised because her terrific memoir makes clear how bad her health has been, or at least was, for several decades.

I reflect that she will be celebrated and lamented, but not nearly as much as the late Queen; but that she was much more talented than the late Queen, and put her great talent and intelligence into numerous books, sometimes very long ones, with great productivity and dedication.

I read Wolf Hall and was quite captivated by it at the time, but never found the time to read the follow up or any of her other books. I thought the bbc adaptation was the best drama series they've done for decades and have watched it at least 4 or 5 times. Her style wasn't really my thing and I didn't like her takes on history when she popped on R4 programs occasionally. But still I'd be very happy if there was a tv adaptation of The Mirror & the Light that is as good as WH.

oh I've just heard the WH director saying he is currently working on a production of The Mirror & the Light for the bbc.

Would I get more out of Wolf Hall if I read a Very Short Introduction-type book beforehand? It’s been on my to-read list for ages, but I once started A Place of Greater Safety and felt like I needed a bit more grounding in the French Revolution to really appreciate it. And if the answer is “yes", any recommendations?

Others will disagree, but a passing knowledge of the Tudors is fine, I think. What she does with Cromwell is so immersive that, as much as she's clearly in love with the source material, it kind of renders the histories irrelevant.

What are her best non-WH books? I've read the whole trilogy but felt it was kind of a sharp decline — the first was amazing and perfect, but the second was too short and the third was too long and abandoned the narrative discipline that made the first two work.

I can't really process that Mantel has gone. This is daftly romantic, but she never seemed quite alive in some way, at least not in the way that the rest of us are alive. I need to work out what I mean by that, but somehow her presence and acuity were always otherworldly (this isn't to disrespect Giving Up the Ghost, which is wholly and brutally alive, but that book stands outside everything she's written).

Loved A Place of Greater Safety - I can see feeling the need for more background with the Revolution because it's kind of like a movie with no establishing shots, she just throws you from room to room over the course of years but that was part of my appreciation.

Lots of gems in the collection of short stories I read (w/ The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher - maybe that was the collection title too).

I've read the whole trilogy but felt it was kind of a sharp decline — the first was amazing and perfect, but the second was too short and the third was too long and abandoned the narrative discipline that made the first two work.

I agree that WH was perfect but disagree that the trilogy declined. I love Beyond Black, but it is baggy. The autobiography is fantastic. I still haven't read APOGS because I am lazy and scared of it.

many xposts to blatherskite

i think Chinaski is otm about Wolf Hall being immersive, you don’t really need a deep knowledge of Tudors aside from Hank 8 is the king, the book really gives you a lot of the context

i mean, i knew so little about the Tudors & English history in general that i spent half the book thinking Thomas Cromwell was OLIVER cromwell bc it was the only Cromwell i’d heard of lol

so so sad about Hilary’s passing. such a beautiful writer, never enjoy historical fiction more than in her hands.Kinda ruins you for other writers in the genre.

Good excuse to explore the rest of her catalog, have only read the Wolf Hall trilogy & A Place Of Greater Safety so far

What are her best non-WH books?

Beyond Black is amazing. Absolutely nothing like the Cromwell books either

Can't wait to dig in.

I thought the prose in Wolf Hall was great. Stood out as such at the time to me. I have picked up a number of others by her which have got as far as to my to-be-read pile.

I’ve only read Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, but I thought they were extraordinary. As a writer I can’t even think of who to compare her to, and those books at least she has this fully formed style that is completely modern but integrates fluently with this reimagined, deeply researched 16th century world. The knowing tone, the currents of sardonic humor, it’s a really singular voice.

otm. her writing has such a light touch in terms of reading but there’s so much craft in it, really a delight to read

wow, can't wait. Thanks, all.

place of greater safety is a fever dream, in the best way, and the blistering pace once it gets to the actual revolution is thrilling. i maybe could’ve used more knowledge of the revolution, especially since the novel focuses so tightly on paris and doesn’t dwell on the geopolitical ramifications, but i honestly preferred reading the book then going down a wiki wormhole with mantel’s characterizations in mind

Maybe I'll make that my next Mantel read — the third in the Cromwell series doesn't really appeal to me, from what I've read. The first two were so good that I kind of don't want to spoil them by reading what may be a lesser or unnecessary iteration.

i didn't find the mirror and the light to be a let-down, except in the unavoidable sense that the central character -- whose consciousness is the making of the world and the feel of the world, its intelligence, its drive -- is at the close of this book decisively unmade, and the shadow of this, which is not exactly a surprise to anyone as a reader, colours yr response to his decisions throughout: yr watching someone whose joy was a control he'd entirely earned for himself (while surrounded by those who have it handed to them), and yr pleasure in being with him was also this control of course, and yet here you know from the outset that he no longer has it and is actually making bad choices… so there's an ill-fashioned feel where this wasn't so before. he seems doughy and fallible and you don't like him so much like that (so you like the book less)

soes she handle this change of mode as well as she might? i'd like to see the argument that she doesn't, as opposed to ppl simply projecting their disappointment in the inevitable shape of the plot onto the judgments abt its quality -- it is after all the tale of a colossal political defeat which the mind we're in (i mean crom not mantel) wants us to believe is undeserved, and that feels bad!

(but it doesn't mean the book is bad)

also i want someone to explain the mirror and the light as a metaphor: it's kind of spelled out a couple of times but i still don't really get it

it in no sense spoils the earlier books, though some of the stories in them are retold or otherwise complicated (we also learn more abt TC's youth and abt italy)

yeah you are otm re cromwell’s loss of control in mirror & light makes him less appealing + book less so as a byproduct— it took me a long time to finish that one but i could never put my finger on why

a place of greater safety is great but def less immersive at first compared to wolfhall - it took me longer to grasp the context & who’s and and where’s of it all but once shit pops off it’s great

I read somewhere that Mantel had the final scene first and she worked everything backwards from there. I think in the early books, Cromwell clearly gets away from her, in the best of ways, but the closer she gets to the final scene, the less Mantel is able to avoid the inevitable. The writing inevitably becomes more cramped; Cromwell seems to vibrate on the page rather than leap out of it or bestride it the way he does in the early parts of the trilogy. That emotional teleology is what colours the books as they tumble toward the inevitable.

I've never been entirely sure about the mirror and the light. It seems to function as a free-floating metaphor for a bunch of things - not least the writing process.

I bought A Place of Greater Safety yesterday at the bookshop and checked Fludd out of the library this morning. May go with the 174-page novel first.

as an index of HM's self-discipline it's worth reading up on where the secondary characters in the wolf hall trilogy end up (norfolk or wriothesley or TC's son): which she well knows but obviously cromwell can't (he's as haunted as any mantel character, but not by his posthumous future) -- anyway there's dozens of ironies and foreshadowings she could have played with, perhaps to mitigate the sense of suffocating doom, imagined glimpses of ways out -- but she just doesn't, which has to be a choice

meanwhile im rewatching the TV show like a boss

Cromwell is haunted by his inevitable demise though isn't he - even if it's unconscious? He knows that his role means death at some point, no matter how confident he seems. Perhaps the choice was to not present him as weak in this regard? I need to re-read but I sense there must be dreams and visions that hint at escape.

the text is here and there haunted by the text of the moments of the demise (to be non-spoilery abt it) (and obscure lol) so maybe in that sense; my memory of his dreams and visions is that he's more shut into them than not but i'd also have to reread to be sure

About to finish A Place of Greater Safety.

What a strange little book Fludd is.

rereading A Place of Greater Safety again <3

I have missed these floppy-haired revolutionaries

*note to self* stop trying to make 'a slice of greater pastry' happen.

think I might just read the mirror & the light without rereading the other two first.

i finished rereading Place of Greater Safety

how the fuck did she do it
HOW
this book is like pure time travel, with the benefit of not having to smell anything

also danton’s confession scene underrated comedic gem

book made me grow my hair out tbh

no Saint-Just, living or dead, will do the same for me.

The book's helluva feat.

no Saint-Just, living or dead, will do the same for me.

well, yeah

I found an archive of a great interview from 1993 with Mantel w Socialist Review talking in detail about A Place of Greater Safety

she wanted to do a novel about Marat!

https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/5466-literature-of-the-revolution

Finally resolved to re-read & finish The Mirror & The Light - i had put it down only bc I wasn’t quite ready for the inevitable, and them her passing gave me longer pause

Anyway, still marvel at her prose, the casual poetry, imagery & memories floating in and out, everything has this very gentle floating movement to it like summery curtains in a breeze? Very intoxicating.

Also chefs kiss the way her dialogue can sketch almost entire scenes without heavy exposition or much outward description, like when the cat runs up the tree early on <3 I love how she had such confidence in her character’s voices.

finished Mirror & The Light FINALLY
once the denouement of the treason happens, it’s such a slippery slope to the end

definitely a lot more plot establishement in this one, and the dullness of Jane Seymour works against enjoyment

but the way all those threads tighten & pull together is still v stressful

anne of cleves prob the only one to get out of everything relatively unscathed

christophe <3

TC’s last moments on the block were so ethereal but scary, cannot fathom being in that situation & not screaming yr head off dribbling snot all over

jesus

sooo i’m gonna reread wolf hall now because TC still beckons and i don’t wanna leave yet

ive probably taked abt this elsewhere but anne of cleves ended up with the title "the king's beloved sister" and later on henry wd go and eat with her in her various nice houses -- he became very fond of her! but not in a queenly way luckily for her :|

she was the last of the wives to pass away, of illness at just 41 or 42, but very nearly in elizabeth's reign

yeah i saw in the author’s note that Henry & Anne became friends
struck me as maybe the most mature interaction he’d ever had with a woman lol

and dumping her for ~katherine howard~
so bloody predictable

i mean bc we all knew from history she was the next wife but aside from that, behaviour = rmde

i like HM's theory: that the person not well represented by holbein's portrait was *henry* rather than AoC, so that when he surprised her (surprises are always a bad idea) she could not compose her face in time at the ghastly sight she beheld and his enormous vanity was wounded; after that the marriage was impossible

if yr rereading a thing to look out for is the way TC's tales of his earlier life subtly shift and change (as he changes)

We're Not So Different the history Podcast did a couple fo episodes of What Ifs recently. This weel's one had a section based around the counterfactual of Arthur the other Tudor brother surviving and Henry dying. I like that show
https://open.spotify.com/episode/3NUkabzRev0me6i9g4dO7u?si=f776c99755594397

xpost yeah hm’s version seems plausible!
plus henry w his bad health & gammy leg surely can’t have looked half as strapping & virile as the holbein portrait makes out

love how the “eel-boy” flashbacks reveals its details over the course of Mirror & Light, slowly unfurling & unfurling with more grim detail
(ie this is the Fight that likely set off Walter’s final beating before TC leaves home in the opening of Wolf Hall)

general question

i’m kinda interested in reading more abt the Protestant Reformation - any book recommendations?

This probably isn't what you had in mind but Q by Luther Blisset is a highly entertaining anarchist historical adventure set during the reformation, in particular the peasants revolt, very politically astute and informative.

Q is a great book for sure

Diarmaid MacCulloch's The Reformation: A History is highly regarded.

oh and Peter Wilson's The Thirty Years War: Europe’s Tragedy is a great read on the fallout

cf also ilxor max's finest ilx hour: the thirty years war