Jimmy Savile. Flickr/Downing Street. Some rights reserved.
Wolf Hall made good television. The hope is that there will be more because the narrative does not end with the death of Anne Boleyn. Thomas Cromwell is an intriguing figure. My memories of A-level history precluded me from ploughing through Hilary Mantel’s novels. But the actual history was part of my childhood. I grew up knowing that Wolsey was arrested two villages away, that the Pilgrimage of Grace was raised close by, and that the Holbein portrait of Henry VIII was just a little further away at Castle Howard. It made early Tudor history a part of local folklore. The beautiful ruins of abbeys closed by Cromwell made a good day out, the poignancy of their desolation acting as counterpoint to the paradisal landscapes. It was a visit to an abandoned culture, evidence in stone of an overwhelming and irreversible change in the social and economic nature of sixteenth century England.
I seized upon Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, although Tawney was not on the reading list. Among the histories that were required reading included the obvious names: S.T. Bindoff, A.G. Dickens and G.R. Elton [academics modestly hiding their identities behind initials]. Bindoff I recall as very writerly. Elton was dry but thorough. Elton’s Cromwell, meticulously researched, is a man without a conscience, a time-serving functionary who enforced his master’s will without restraint, without conviction and without the least scruple. His countenance and manner were without affectation. He made no secret of his humble origins. Nor did he use his background to promote himself. He accommodated himself to his rise in circumstance. Intelligent, rational even, he was furtive, bland and banal. He was Eichmann.
