Wolf Hall reimagines the rise of Thomas Cromwell, a blacksmith's son who claws his way from obscurity to become Henry VIII's indispensable fixer. As Cardinal Wolsey falls and the king's obsession with Anne Boleyn upends the English church and court, Cromwell maneuvers with cool intelligence through a world of shifting allegiances, old grudges, and mortal risk. Written in Mantel's distinctive close third-person present tense, the novel follows Cromwell from Wolsey's disgrace through Anne's coronation, ending as he sets his sights on the Seymour family at Wolf Hall.
Books mentioned in Wolf Hall (8)
Utopia by Thomas More: “This is how the book Utopia begins: friends, talking in a garden.”
Le Morte d'Arthur by Thomas Malory: “He reads Le Morte d’Arthur, and because it is the new edition they crowd around him, looking over his shoulder at the title page. ‘Here beginneth the first book of the most noble and worthy prince King Arthur sometime King of Great Britain…’”
The Golden Legend by Jacobus de Voragine: “When the weather is too wet to hunt, Gregory sits poring over The Golden Legend; he likes the lives of the saints.”
The Book of the Courtier by Baldassare Castiglione: “Because it is said in the book called The Courtier that in men of base degree we often see high gifts of nature.”
Chronicles by Jean Froissart: “And here is Froissart done into English, which His Majesty himself bade me undertake.”
The Freedom of a Christian by Martin Luther: “The leather-seller had possession of Luther’s Liberty of a Christian Man, the text copied out in his own hand.”
The Obedience of a Christian Man by William Tyndale: “I have read his book, The Obedience of a Christian Man. I myself have shown it to the king and marked the passages that touch on his authority.”
Summa de Arithmetica by Luca Pacioli: “It is perhaps the only good thing ever to come out of a monastery. Brother Luca Pacioli. It took him thirty years to write. … It is Summa de Arithmetica.”