Welcome to the Crommissary

                                     

Sir Thomas More

Thomas Cromwell

     Here are some doodles from history. The top sketch depicts my newest histo-celebrity bohunk: Thomas Cromwell. Despite Thomas's achievements (a butcher's son-cum-Earl and Royal Chancellor) the Cromwell we are more readily acquainted with is his great grandson, Oliver Cromwell, pappy of the protestant protectorate.

Well, step aside Oliver because T. Crom's in the house. My recent Cromfandom has been ignited after finishing Hillary Mantel's masterful 2009 novel, Wolf Hall. The book starts smack-dab in the middle of the oft lampooned reign of Henry VIII, just as Anne Boleyn enters stage right. The subsequent saga of libertinage and decapitation is no doubt familiar to you. No? Just look to your nearest subway poster and be pedaled the period's most recent revival, that wet-fart of a television drama "The Tudors." Henry VIII is portrayed by Jonathan Rhys Meyers for gods sake! Holbein is rolling in his grave.

What elevates Mantel's version of this tired historical episode is her framing of the ordeal through the perspective of Thomas Cromwell. In literally every other depiction of the time, Cromwell is slandered as an amoral Machiavelli, conniving as he is capacious. Here, we see a very different portrait of the man, one sympathetic to his class struggles, his religious tolerance, his razor intellect. The book is furthermore couched in Cromwell’s overarching competition with the Royal Chancellor: Sir Thomas More. More, normally the lone voice against Tudor corruption, is instead illustrated as the masochistic torturer/fanatic that he most probably was. Watching these giants clash is enormously satisfying, Mantel infusing their repartee with the wit such great minds so richly deserve. It's real good.

To head off any further yawns I'll cease my gurglings and just plain recommend that you pick up Wolf Hall asap. It won the 2009 Man Booker Prize, it’s just that good, and I'm about to snatch the sequel (winner of the 2012 Booker) Bring up the bodies. Wherein the first novel we get a peek at Cromwell’s meteoric rise, I expect the next to annal the later, muuuch darker period of his life. Spoiler Alert: like so many of the best stories, it ends in a beheading. I'm going to pick it up next time I actually leave the house. Join me, won't you?