Wolf Hall: is this the best historical novel ever written?

Secret Life of Books

Hello Thomas Cromwell. And Hello Lev Grossman, best-selling author of The Magicians trilogy, the Silver Arrow children’s books, and now The Bright Sword, who joins Sophie and Jonty as THEIR FIRST EVER GUEST to talk about Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall.
Published in 2009 to immediate acclaim, Wolf Hall reinvented historical fiction and changed the way we see Henry VIII and the Tudor court of 16th Century England. Mantel’s idea was to tell the story of Henry VIII and his disastrous marriages through the eyes of his right-hand man Thomas Cromwell. Traditionally thought of as mysterious and Machievallian, Cromwell, in Mantel’s hands, becomes a heroic survivor, navigating his way through a treacherous world.
Behind this irresistible story lies Mantel’s own unique philosophy of history, her belief in ghosts and her experience of chronic pain (through endemetriosis). Lev Grossman shares his insights as an author profoundly influenced by Mantel’s use of character, dialogue and perspective; an author who is also, in his view, a master of ‘the title-drop’.
Personal revelations abound too. In a shock reveal, Sophie discloses that she is married to Lev, while Jonty manages to trace his personal ancestry back to Thomas Cromwell’s brutal father Walter - raising the alarming possibility of a Putney-style rampage through the SLOB studio.
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Further Reading:

• Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall (Fourth Estate, 2009)
• Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety (Harper Perennial, 2009)
• Hilary Mantel, Giving Up the Ghost (Harper Perennial, 2009)

Listen:

• The Reith Lectures, Hilary Mantel (BBC)