His thoughts turn increasingly to the miserable childhood he has sought to leave behind and to his happy years in Antwerp and Florence, where he discovered a new world that offered a blacksmith’s son from Putney the chance to get ahead on the basis of brains and ferocious ambition. In “ The Mirror and the Light,” as Cromwell grapples with aristocratic foes who want to send him to the same fate, his own inner voices clamor for attention. The dead have been slowly gathering around him since his mentor, Cardinal Wolsey, died in 2009’s “ Wolf Hall.” Their voices grew insistent in “ Bring up the Bodies,” when the moral consequences of Cromwell’s allegiance to King Henry VIII became apparent as he railroaded Anne Boleyn and five personal enemies to execution so that Henry could marry Jane Seymour. Portrayed by Mantel with pathos and terrific energy, Cromwell is as complex as he is unforgettable: a politician and a fixer, a husband and a father, a man who both defied and defined his age.The past catches up with Thomas Cromwell in the searing finale of Hilary Mantel’s magnificent trilogy. The inevitable question remains: how long can anyone survive under Henry’s cruel and capricious gaze?Įagerly awaited and eight years in the making, The Mirror & the Light completes Cromwell’s journey from self-made man to one of the most feared, influential figures of his time. But as fortune’s wheel turns, Cromwell’s enemies are gathering in the shadows. All of England lies at his feet, ripe for innovation and religious reform. Despite rebellion at home, traitors plotting abroad and the threat of invasion testing Henry’s regime to the breaking point, Cromwell’s robust imagination sees a new country in the mirror of the future.

The blacksmith’s son from Putney emerges from the spring’s bloodbath to continue his climb to power and wealth, while his formidable master, Henry VIII, settles to short-lived happiness with his third queen, Jane Seymour.Ĭromwell, a man with only his wits to rely on, has no great family to back him, no private army. As her remains are bundled into oblivion, Cromwell breakfasts with the victors. The story begins in May 1536: Anne Boleyn is dead, decapitated in the space of a heartbeat by a hired French executioner.

Book review the mirror and the light