Wolf Hall | Book Report

Over the next few months, I'm experimenting with writing some book reports on what I'm reading. Here's the second one! Let me know what you think and if this is something you'd be interested in seeing more of in the future!

Wolf Hall is a historical novel written by Hilary Mantel and first published in 2009. It follows the 16th century pseudo-politician Thomas Cromwell as he establishes himself as an aide to Henry VIII, and assists that King in building political and religious consent for his first divorce from Katherine of Aragon.

Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy (this is the first of three books) had been on my to-read list for some time. It’s a book which is very well thought-of in literary circles and has been very successfully adapted for both stage and small screen. I essentially had a bit of book-based FOMO.

The spark behind me actually picking it up, however, was that the protestant reformation seems to have come up a lot in other books I’ve been reading lately. This began when I was working on my Treason Fest mini-series, but the event has followed me through a recent attempt to better understand the slow birth of capitalism during this period.

In works such as Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Rise of Capitalism or E.P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class, it’s evident that religion and economics were deeply intertwined in both the emergence of the market economy and the social movements which sought to temper or oppose the process of dislocation and precaritisation it inflicted on the newly emergent working class.

It might seem strange to turn to a work of fiction to try and understand this better. And, to be honest, I didn’t initially think it would. But, I often find great value in the way that fiction can unlock a more emotive understanding of what it might have been like to live through a certain period.

I’m always reminded when I think of this of the frequent use by Thomas Piketty in Capital in the 21st Century of fictional texts (such as Pride and Prejudice) as evidence of wealth inequality during the 19th century. Mr Darcy’s £10,000 per year estate might not be hard data in the traditional sense but he accepts that the figure must at least have been reasonable for people not to throw the book out on first reading.

The utility of fiction as a historical insight is most obvious when reading works actually written in a certain period. If one wants to understand the anxiety and fear of British conservatives and liberals following the French Revolution, for example, one can do much worse than to read Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. That book sees a writer who was a solid supporter of social reform nevertheless terrified that the British masses might similarly rise up.

Mantel’s book is aided by being meticulously researched. It definitely takes a partial view of matters: Cromwell is not perfect, but he is broadly painted as a moral and upstanding figure. His political machinations are farmed as being necessary; or at least understandable.

What Wolf Hall does better than anything else I’ve read is overturn the view that the reformation in England and the establishment of the Church of England was merely the result of the King wanting a divorce. That is a key motivating factor, but Mantel ably binds that concern up with evolving views of theology, religious organisation and politics during the period.

Thomas Cromwell emerges as a thoroughly modern figure. He arranges loans for people. He views moneylenders and markets as often more important than the feudal structures of Lords and Kings. He, like so many others in the book, recognises that the world is changing.

England’s break from Rome in a religious sense also appears as a key political moment in the book. This is the establishment of an independent nation state as much as an independent church.

Wolf Hall is not short. I took a break at the midpoint to read a couple of other things; I’m not immune to wanting the sense of achievement of completing a book more than once every few weeks! But, the length of the book adds to its immersion. By the end, it’s hard to not feel deeply bound up in a world of secretive English translations of the Bible, international tensions and treason.

There were also more interpersonal sections which hit me far harder than I expected. There’s a chapter about the Sweating Sickness which swept through Europe during the period which was absolutely devastating. I will never forgetting sitting in a hotel room whilst on the road filming Boomers and being hit by grief.

I’m going to take a break before reading the second and third books in the trilogy. I’ve got a few nonfiction books I need to read for upcoming projects. But, I can’t wait to return to this world as soon as possible, and to see what other insights it might have to offer about this tumultuous period.