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The Mirror & the Light by Hilary Mantel review – Cromwell’s end

The long-awaited final part of the Booker-winning trilogy is a masterpiece that will keep yielding its riches

So the trilogy is complete, and it is magnificent. The portrait of Thomas Cromwell that began with Wolf Hall (2009) and continued with Bring Up the Bodies (2012) now concludes with a novel of epic proportions, every bit as thrilling, propulsive, darkly comic and stupendously intelligent as its predecessors. “Concludes” is perhaps not the word, for there is no tone of finality. Cromwell, Lord Privy Seal, deputy head of the church in England, chief minister, second man of the realm, Cremuel, my Lord Cromell, Crumb to friends, has a great deal of business to do, through 900 pages, before we contemplate endings. The heights of his power are all before us, and though he likes ladders he prefers to think of wings.

Bring Up the Bodies closed with bloodshed and wreckage. “But it’s useful wreckage, isn’t it?” and now Cromwell uses it, strenuously remodelling catastrophes as opportunities. Over four years, 1536-40, his tasks include the seemingly impossible. He must reconcile Lady Mary to her father the king, bring down two of the most powerful families in Europe, turn monks into money, prevent imperial invasion, organise a new queen. Taking opponents in his grasp like the snake whose poisoned bite he once survived, he must manoeuvre his arch-enemies the Duke of Norfolk and Stephen Gardiner. Cromwell lives these years with henchmen at his back, and guards at every door. “The times being what they are, a man may enter the gate as your friend and change sides while he crosses the courtyard.” As for clothes, best try a reversible garment: “one never knows, is it dying or dancing?”

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from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/32r9kCT
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