Having started a fascination with the Tudors when reading Wolf Hall last year (see my blog Reading the Tudors) I was looking forward to its sequel Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel (which for some reason I kept incorrectly calling Bringing up the Bodies). I read it on the plane to and from holiday and couldn’t put it down until I’d finished it on my return.
The pace seemed much quicker than Wolf Hall, which took me a good hundred pages to get into. I’m not sure whether it was because I already felt I knew the story of Anne Boleyn’s downfall well through what I have read since Wolf Hall, whether it’s because the action is all so addictive as you know where it inevitably ends and means there is no need for long context, or whether it’s just written to be read at a breakneck pace (pardon the expression). Whatever it was, I raced through it and really, really enjoyed it.
It is of course, as the author points out in her note at the end, the story of Thomas Cromwell not of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. Cromwell is a fascinating character, not least because of the role he played in the rise and fall of the Boleyns despite his own humble origins. But what is so gripping is seeing her downfall described in such a cool and calculating tone as her demise is both plotted and, quite literally, executed.
Read this book. You’re missing out if you don’t.
