Bring Up the Bodies, as everybody knows, is the sequel to Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel’s fictional re-imagining of the life and times of Henry VIII’s most effective servant, Thomas Cromwell. We have long been banging our spoons and forks for it. Speaking for myself, I finished the first with an almost unbearable curiosity to find out what was going to happen next — a strange result, when you think of it, because we all know perfectly well what is going to happen.
Mantel is comprehensive with her sources. Every scene is secured, like a piano key to its hammer, to the corresponding page of the great 21-volume Calendar of State Papers of Henry’s reign. The last book ended with the death of Sir Thomas More, therefore in this one Katherine of Aragon will die; the Boleyn queen will lose two babies, she will be arrested along with her five ‘lovers’ and the king will chop all their heads off.
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