The long-awaited sequel to Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, the
stunning conclusion to Hilary Mantel's Man Booker Prize-winning Wolf
Hall trilogy. 'A masterpiece' Guardian 'It is a
book not read, but lived' Telegraph 'Her Cromwell novels are,
for my money, the greatest English novels of this century' Observer
'If you cannot speak truth at a beheading, when can you speak it?'
England, May 1536. Anne Boleyn is dead, decapitated in the
space of a heartbeat by a hired French executioner.
As her
remains are bundled into oblivion, Thomas Cromwell breakfasts with the
victors. The blacksmith's son from Putney emerges from the spring's
bloodbath to continue his climb to power and wealth, while his
formidable master, Henry VIII, settles to short-lived happiness with his
third queen, Jane Seymour. Cromwell is a man with only his
wits to rely on; he has no great family to back him, no private army.
Despite rebellion at home, traitors plotting abroad and the threat of
invasion testing Henry's regime to breaking point, Cromwell's robust
imagination sees a new country in the mirror of the future. But can a
nation, or a person, shed the past like a skin? Do the dead continually
unbury themselves? What will you do, the Spanish ambassador asks
Cromwell, when the king turns on you, as sooner or later he turns on
everyone close to him? With The Mirror and the Light, Hilary
Mantel brings to a triumphant close the trilogy she began with Wolf Hall
and Bring Up the Bodies. She traces the final years of Thomas Cromwell,
the boy from nowhere who climbs to the heights of power, offering a
defining portrait of predator and prey, of a ferocious contest between
present and past, between royal will and a common man's vision: of a
modern nation making itself through conflict, passion and courage.
The Mirror and the Light - Hilary Mantel
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£9.99