Thomas Cromwell has become Tudor England’s leading man. Henry VIII has been upstaged, and Putney’s guttersnipe now takes centre stage with Anne Boleyn. In fact, Cromwell conquered the theatre five years ago when the RSC dramatised the first two volumes of Hilary Mantel’s monumental reimagining of his rise and fall. This autumn he takes to the field again for the fatal climax of his tale.
Cromwell’s usurpation has been as fast and firm as his original swipe at power. Mantel’s trilogy has built him a towering platform: nearly 2,000 pages. Historians have taken it higher still. Three blockbuster biographies have been published since 2015; no monarch or statesman of any age, not even Churchill, has attracted such attention.
