The Plantagenet Pole family conspires against the crown. Jane Seymour becomes queen, has a son, dies. Even Diarmaid MacCulloch’s excellent biography of Cromwell (which appeared after Bring Up the Bodies, and which Mantel praises generously on its dust-jacket) struggles to hold together all the different national and international and secular and religious events of these years. But setting a novel in the years between 15 is a tough ask. The Mirror and the Light has all the dark witty glitter of the earlier volumes in the trilogy. It covers a little more than four years of historical time, from the execution of Anne Boleyn in May 1536 to (no spoilers here, since this is where the whole three-act tragedy has always been heading) Cromwell’s execution in late July 1540. Eight years after that the 883 pages of The Mirror and the Light dropped with a thud through my letterbox – some letterboxes may require modification to accommodate its girth. Three years later came Bring Up the Bodies, which in 410 pages created a tight tragic narrative about Cromwell’s part in the fall of Anne Boleyn over the single year 1535-36. Its 650 pages covered the years from roughly 1500 to 1535. Wolf Hall, the first instalment of Hilary Mantel’s trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, appeared more than a decade ago.
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