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The Mirror & the Light: A Novel (Wolf Hall Trilogy, 3) Paperback – May 4, 2021

4.6 out of 5 stars 23,623 ratings

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The brilliant #1 New York Times bestseller

Named a best book of 2020 by The New York Times, The Washington Post, TIME, The Guardian, and many more

With
The Mirror & the Light, Hilary Mantel brings to a triumphant close the trilogy she began with her peerless, Booker Prize-winning novels, 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 story begins in 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, 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, a man with only his wits to rely on, 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 the breaking point, Cromwell’s robust imagination sees a new country in the mirror of the future. All of England lies at his feet, ripe for innovation and religious reform. But as fortune’s wheel turns, Cromwell’s enemies are gathering in the shadows. The inevitable question remains: how long can anyone survive under Henry’s cruel and capricious gaze?

Eagerly awaited and eight years in the making,
The Mirror & the Light completes Cromwell’s journey from self-made man to one of the most feared, influential figures of his time. Portrayed by Mantel with pathos and terrific energy, Cromwell is as complex as he is unforgettable: a politician and a fixer, a husband and a father, a man who both defied and defined his age.

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From the Publisher

The Mirror and the Light Hilary Mantel

The Mirror and the Light Hilary Mantel The New York Times Book Review

The Mirror and the Light Hilary Mantel

The Mirror and the Light Hilary Mantel The Washington Post quote

The Mirror and the Light Hilary Mantel The Guardian review
Wolf Hall (Wolf Hall Trilogy, 1)
Bring Up the Bodies (Wolf Hall Trilogy, 2)
The Mirror & the Light: A Novel (Wolf Hall Trilogy, 3)
Customer Reviews
4.2 out of 5 stars 22,344
4.5 out of 5 stars 20,874
4.6 out of 5 stars 23,623
Price $11.99 $13.60 $23.49
The Wolf Hall Trilogy by Hilary Mantel Book 1 Book 2 Book 3

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The Wolf Hall trilogy is probably the greatest historical fiction accomplishment of the past decade." The New York Times Book Review

"
The Mirror & the Light is the triumphant capstone to Mantel’s trilogy on Thomas Cromwell, the son of a blacksmith who rose to become the consigliere of Henry VIII...The world is blotted out as you are enveloped in the sweep of a story rich with conquest, conspiracy and mazy human psychology…. Mantel is often grouped with writers of historical fiction, [but] the more apt, and useful, comparison might be with Robert Caro, the biographer of Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson, the great anatomizer of political power." ―Parul Sehgal, The New York Times

"The searing finale of Hilary Mantel’s magnificent trilogy...Mantel is clear-eyed yet compassionate in depicting her coldly calculating, covertly idealistic protagonist and the equally complex people he encounters in his rise and fall from power. Dense with resonant metaphors and alive with discomfiting ideas,
The Mirror & the Light provides a fittingly Shakespearean resolution to Mantel’s magisterial work." ―The Washington Post

"
Wolf Hall, a decade ago, was a sensational character study that electrified an often-visited slice of history. The Mirror & the Light marks a triumphant end to a spellbinding story." ―NPR

"Cromwell [has] a depth at once Shakespearean and modernist. He could be Hamlet, or the title character of one of Freud’s case studies...The dissolution of Cromwell coincides with his unmooring in time... One moment he is sucked into his childhood; the next, he is hurled into the sphere of the angels." ―
Judith Shulevitz, The Atlantic

"Breathtaking...The plot here is shaped as meticulously as any thriller…. With this trilogy, Mantel has redefined what the historical novel is capable of...Taken together, her Cromwell novels are, for my money, the greatest English novels of this century. Someone give the Booker Prize judges the rest of the year off." ―
Stephanie Merritt, The Guardian

"Is it as good as the first two books? Yes. Is it a masterpiece? Yes...Mantel may be unique among modern novelists in her ability to make the past as viscerally compelling as the present. A sensualist, she re-creates an age rife with beauty and dread...She re-creates the wicked, bawdy humor of the age, and her action scenes rival Shakespeare. She is an intricate and flawless plotter...But her overriding genius is for characterization." ―
The Los Angeles Times

"A masterpiece...A novel of epic proportions [that is] every bit as thrilling, propulsive, darkly comic and stupendously intelligent as its predecessors...The trilogy is complete and it is magnificent." ―
Alexandra Harris, The Guardian

"Brilliant... From that opening sentence―‘Once the queen’s head is severed, he walks away’―axes and the shadow of death are everywhere...Mantel takes what is known of Cromwell―his meteoric rise, his autodidactic scholarship, his reformist tendencies―and weaves them into a masterful portrait of a man at mid-life, facing up to his past."
The Boston Globe

"The entire trilogy is a brilliant engagement with the exercise and metaphysics of power in 16th-century Europe, an age in which sovereignty was understood to be divinely conferred, channeled through blood...Ms. Mantel has wonderfully conjured the mentality, materiality and channels of power in a vanished age…It is Ms. Mantel’s depiction of Cromwell’s inner workings, so credibly and vividly imagined, that make the work great, as do the characters she summons." ―
The Wall Street Journal

"A stunning capstone to an epic that’s both engrossing history and an unsurpassed literary achievement...
The Mirror & the Light is a diadem of riches, binding together the complex pieces of Cromwell’s character while leading inexorably toward the scaffold. With the trilogy now complete, Mantel cements her position as one of our greatest literary stylists and innovators." ―Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

"Majestic and often breathtakingly poetic...What
The Mirror & the Light offers―even more than the two previous volumes―is engulfing, total sensory immersion in a world...As with the most powerful and enduring historical fictions, the book grips the reader most tightly when, as is often the case, the writing comes as close to poetry as prose ever may." ―Simon Schama, The Financial Times

"A masterpiece...A novel of epic proportions [that is] every bit as thrilling, propulsive, darkly comic and stupendously intelligent as its predecessors...The trilogy is complete and it is magnificent.”
―Alexandra Harris, The Guardian

“Deep, suspenseful, chewy, complex and utterly transporting―truly a full banquet. Most miraculously of all, it’s every bit as good as the first two books, both of which won the Booker Prize. Imagine if the third The Godfather movie had been just as magnificent as the first two: It’s like that. A perfectly executed masterpiece.” ―Elizabeth Gilbert, The Wall Street Journal Magazine

"These novels are sure to be among the books that endure from the early decades of this century…In a novel that could travel far on character and plot, Mantel adds the accelerant of gorgeous language…We are in strange territory, an era that can feel very foreign…But what is not strange―what is achingly familiar and acutely relevant―is the way Mantel meticulously unfolds to us the nature of the human heart, all the old unchanging lusts, avarices, jealousies, hatreds and loves, the desire to live, the fear of death." ―
Geraldine Brooks, Air Mail

"This is rich, full-bodied fiction. Indeed, it might well be the best of the trilogy simply because there is more of it, a treasure on every page...The brisk, present-tense narration makes you feel as though you are watching these long-settled events live, via a shaky camera phone... Mantel has…elevated historical fiction as an art form... At a time when the general movement of literature has been towards the margins, she has taken us to the dark heart of history."
The Times (London)

"Fascinating...What Mantel does, often brilliantly, is put movement and muscle on the bare bones of what’s known...[Cromwell’s] bundled contradictions―a polyglot scholar with bruised knuckles, as ruthless in business as he was benevolent at home―are more than mirror and light; they’re real, indelible life." ―
Entertainment Weekly

"
The Mirror & the Light [features] the embroiled, ruthless, visionary hero of Mantel’s masterwork trilogy, the endlessly compelling Thomas Cromwell...Every page is rich with insight, the soul-deep characterization and cutting observational skill that make Mantel’s trilogy such a singular accomplishment." ―USA Today

"Hilary Mantel has written an epic of English history that does what the
Aeneid did for the Romans and War and Peace for the Russians...As Cromwell approaches his end, cast off by an ungrateful master, Mantel pulls together the strands of his life into a sublime tapestry." The Telegraph (UK)

"Cromwell is a character for the ages...The stunning success of the novels is in large part the result of Ms. Mantel’s skill in fashioning a voice and persona that, while never anachronistic, make Cromwell seem eerily contemporary...Mantel’s genius is to make his 16th-century instincts, such as a willingness to decapitate anyone standing in his path, seem as plausible as his more familiar qualities." ―
The Economist

The Mirror & the Light bears the stamp of Mantel’s genius; it’s a richly hued mural of meticulous research, enthralling characters, and expressionistic language. She is our literary Michelangelo. In Cromwell, a striver who will do anything to survive, she lets us glimpse the invention of modernity. Teeming with pageantry, intrigue, sex, and salvation, The Mirror & the Light reflects the looming tensions of every era, between those who hoard power and those who crave it.” ―O Magazine

"Mantel’s prose is rich and vivid…Mantel makes the past feel so immediate that it seems possible Cromwell might actually manage to save himself…Expectations are high for this novel. And it lives up to them." ―
Vox

“Beautifully written…The book makes for compulsive reading; if it doesn’t win its author her third Booker Prize, there’s no justice.” ―
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Brilliant…. Mantel enthralls with her descriptions of royal life, from its bizarre rites and traditions to its practicalities…. Her research is prodigious, her skill at complex plotting breathtaking, but her greatest strength is her characters and the dialogue she imagines for them.” ―
Tampa Bay Times

“This huge canvas, expertly painted as always, offers many of the pleasures you’ve come to expect of Mantel and her Cromwell books...Cromwell’s execution [is] a brilliantly imagined moment.” ―
The New Yorker

"Another masterpiece of historical fiction...
The Mirror & the Light is superb, right to the last crimson drop...A complex, insightful exploration of power, sex, loyalty, friendship, religion, class and statecraft...A stunning conclusion to one of the great trilogies of our times." ―Independent (UK)

"Mantel’s prose is steadily and quietly luminous, occasionally delivering unforgettable surprises...This is a worthy conclusion to what is undoubtedly one of the great historical fictions of the age, sustaining clarity, tension and depth with a rare consistency." ―New Statesman (UK)

"Mantel’s trilogy―historically scrupulous, but quaveringly alert to more recent resonances― is one of the key achievements in English literature.” ―
The Spectator (UK)

"In Mantel’s hands, the story of the Tudors loses all its heavy familiarity and starts to feel like a custom-built vehicle for her muscular prose and savage wit, not to mention her lifelong concern with violence and evil, religion and ghosts...The page-by-page texture of the writing in
The Mirror & the Light is just as rich and interesting as ever, the pacing and the distribution of scenes are just as lively, and the details every bit as funny...Mantel’s prodigious feat is to have given Cromwell another face, one that he might even have recognized as his own; she has cast a dazzling new light onto the tarnished mirror of the past." ―TLS (UK)

"Magisterial...Mantel's craft shines at the sentence level and in a deep exploration of her themes...The series' first two books won the Booker Prize―the third, rich with memory and metaphor―may be even better." ―Publishers Weekly

"The longed-for final volume in Mantel’s magnificent trilogy is also a stupendously knowledgeable, empathic, witty, harrowing, and provocative novel of power and its distortions...Astute, strategic, sly, funny, poignant, and doomed, Cromwell rules these vivid pages, yet every character and setting resonates, and Mantel’s virtuoso, jousting dialogue is exhilarating...[A] timeless saga of the burden of rule, social treacheries, and the catastrophic cost of indulging a raving despot." ―
Booklist (starred review)

About the Author

Hilary Mantel was the author of the bestselling novel Wolf Hall and its sequel, Bring Up the Bodies, which both won the Booker Prize. The final novel of the Wolf Hall trilogy, The Mirror & the Light, debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and won world-wide critical acclaim. Mantel wrote seventeen celebrated books, including the memoir Giving Up the Ghost, and she was awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, the Walter Scott Prize, the Costa Book Award, the Hawthornden Prize, and many other accolades. In 2014, Mantel was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. She died at age seventy in 2022.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Picador
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ May 4, 2021
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 784 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1250182492
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1250182494
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.45 x 1.3 x 8.2 inches
  • Book 3 of 3 ‏ : ‎ The Wolf Hall Trilogy
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 out of 5 stars 23,623 ratings

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Hilary Mantel
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Hilary Mantel is one of Britain’s most accomplished, acclaimed and garlanded writers. She is the author of fifteen books, including A Place of Greater Safety, Beyond Black, and the memoir Giving Up the Ghost. Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies have both been awarded The Man Booker Prize. The conclusion to The Wolf Hall Trilogy, The Mirror & the Light, was published in 2020.

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
23,623 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find this book a masterpiece that's worth the time to read every page, praising its masterful narrative and language. The historical fiction is well-researched and fascinating, particularly for those interested in Medieval British history, with one customer describing it as a monumental recreation of life. Customers appreciate the character development, noting the well-developed dialogues between characters, and find the ending a worthy finish to the trilogy. The book receives positive feedback for its artistic merit, with one customer highlighting how it artfully displays Cromwell's very human qualities.

133 customers mention "Readability"119 positive14 negative

Customers find the book highly readable, describing it as a masterpiece that's worth the time to read every page.

"...Fans of the earlier installments will find it was well worth the wait. The trilogy is a superb legacy to leave behind...." Read more

"764 pages 5 stars This is both a remarkable and entertaining book...." Read more

"...This book also has the added attribute of being the superior of all the books, as the author seems to have reached the full flowering of her powers..." Read more

"...He was a man of his times, sure, but his tale is old as time and worth reading." Read more

96 customers mention "Historical fiction"82 positive14 negative

Customers appreciate the historical fiction elements of the book, describing it as a rich and well-researched tale that captures Medieval British history, with one customer highlighting the endless intrigues in the Court of Henry VIII.

"...series to anyone who appreciates masterful writing and has an interest in English history." Read more

"...But it spite of it all, every volume is a fantastic work of literary fiction...." Read more

"This is historic fiction at its finest. It ranks up there with I, Claudius and Memoirs of Hadrian. The prose is beautiful...." Read more

"...here to be a master of character who also has a good control over the history of this period...." Read more

90 customers mention "Enjoyment"63 positive27 negative

Customers find the book thoroughly enjoyable and enthralling, with one customer describing it as a monumental recreation of life.

"...5 stars This is both a remarkable and entertaining book...." Read more

"...He was transformed into a compelling and almost heroic hero. Certainly not the villain as he's been portrayed in history...." Read more

"...who is saying what and when and to whom so rereading sentences and paragraphs is almost necessary....until it isn't because I gave up...." Read more

"...descriptions of events and more mundane activities are sharper and more memorable; all characters and their personalities more crisply differentiated..." Read more

74 customers mention "Ending"74 positive0 negative

Customers praise the ending of the trilogy, describing it as a worthy conclusion to the series that gripped readers to the very end.

"...That said, this is an outstanding conclusion to the trilogy...." Read more

"...In the end, this is a very good novel even if it doesn’t quite live up to the high standard Ms. Mantel set herself...." Read more

"Hilary Mantel has delivered a worthy finale to her Thomas Cromwell trilogy...." Read more

"...More than acceptable, and probably very appropriate. This is a substantial tome. It’s untrimmed...." Read more

48 customers mention "Insight"48 positive0 negative

Customers praise the book's deep research and scholarly approach, with one customer noting the helpful author's note that provides context.

"Mantel finishes her Cromwell saga with a masterful, insightful, brilliantly written and moving book...." Read more

"...He is a crafty maneuverer, an ambitious schemer, and a skilled reader of the King’s whims and moods...." Read more

"...in all his ambition, vanity, vulnerability, damaged psyche, prodigious intellect, courage, compassion, greed, cunning, and dedication to a goal...." Read more

"...He is a fascinating man, and her imaginative rendering of his mental architecture is, in itself, a feat of writerly bravado that left me convinced..." Read more

47 customers mention "Character development"39 positive8 negative

Customers appreciate the character development in the book, noting well-developed dialogues and helpful character introductions at the beginning, with one customer highlighting how personalities shape politics.

"...Mantel writes sharp, witty dialogue that reveals her characters’ strengths and weaknesses...." Read more

"...He was transformed into a compelling and almost heroic hero. Certainly not the villain as he's been portrayed in history...." Read more

"...I am mourning for this wonderfully human character (as portrayed by Mantel) in all his ambition, vanity, vulnerability, damaged psyche, prodigious..." Read more

"...in the previous volumes, Ms. Mantel shows herself here to be a master of character who also has a good control over the history of this period...." Read more

39 customers mention "Art direction"39 positive0 negative

Customers praise the book's artistic direction, noting its beautiful prose and incredible impression of nature, with one customer highlighting its visual tapestry of English society.

"...Ms. Mantel paints a very real, colorful and comprehensive picture of the 16th Century court of Henry VIII...." Read more

"...Mantel paints vivid pictures of Cromwell's life and his myriad duties. We get detailed pictures of Cromwell and Henry VIII...." Read more

"...human character (as portrayed by Mantel) in all his ambition, vanity, vulnerability, damaged psyche, prodigious intellect, courage, compassion, greed..." Read more

"...He is a fascinating man, and her imaginative rendering of his mental architecture is, in itself, a feat of writerly bravado that left me convinced..." Read more

The author and the book is brilliant but the edition is terrible!
5 out of 5 stars
The author and the book is brilliant but the edition is terrible!
I love Hilary Mantel's writing. Have read almost all of her books and have never been disappointed. She is definitely a brilliant author. I could not wait for the Mirror and the Light to be out, i was following all updates on it, and preordered it as soon as it was possible. It came as a terrible, untrimmed copy. I immediately ordered a replacement copy explaining the problem, and here I got a replacement which is even worse (left on the picture)! It is really even hard to move pages while reading. How you could have released such copies and why you are so stubborn to send it again and again in this shape? No one is really noticing this? So disappointing...
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Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on April 27, 2025
    Format: KindleVerified Purchase
    Mantel finishes her Cromwell saga with a masterful, insightful, brilliantly written and moving book. Fans of the earlier installments will find it was well worth the wait. The trilogy is a superb legacy to leave behind. A wonderful read, wholeheartedly recommended.
  • Reviewed in the United States on June 15, 2020
    Format: KindleVerified Purchase
    764 pages

    5 stars

    This is both a remarkable and entertaining book.

    The third book in a trilogy about the life and times of Thomas Cromwell. Raised up from his blacksmith/brewer's son beginnings, through his travels in Italy and elsewhere on the continent to the very heights of King Henry VIII's court. Protege of and successor to Cardinal Wolsey. Lord Privy Seal. Second only to the king - Vicegerent. Member of the prestigious Order of the Garter open to only twenty-five men in the realm. Earl of Essex, made so shortly before his death.

    The book begins with the aftermath of Queen Anne's death and flashes back to previous time to fill in Cromwell’s life and quarrels with Anne, his friends and his awful home life as a child. The book talks about Walter, Cromwell’s father and the terrible temper he had and how he was very mean to his children. It discusses his now deceased wife and daughters, his nephew Richard and his adoption of Rafe and his relationship with his son Gregory. His relationships with women – great and common.

    The Pilgrimage of Grace is covered. Next is the marriage of the king to Jane Seymour, the subsequent birth of a son and the tragic death of Queen Jane. The book continues to cover the disastrous liaison with Anna of Cleves which was instigated by Thomas.

    Thomas must walk a fine line between those who would destroy him (for they are mostly jealous), and the all powerful mercurial temperament of the king.

    Thomas had a vision of the future that was far beyond the understanding of those around him.

    Ms. Mantel paints a very real, colorful and comprehensive picture of the 16th Century court of Henry VIII. The reader is stalking the palaces and the streets along with the characters in the book. While he certainly looked out for himself, he was also compassionate. He “saved” people from the king's displeasure or even certain death. These actions turned out to be to his detriment later in his life when those who were jealous and the king being tired of him took against him.

    It still surprises and confounds me (although it shouldn't, having read as much about Henry VIII as I have), how quickly the king would turn against a person. Was it his knock on the head during his jousting accident, or his bad leg that tormented him so much that he acted so unpredictably? We'll never know.

    “I should only ever tell the king what he ought to do, not what he could do. For if a lion knows his own strength, no man could control him.” – Thomas More
    14 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on March 27, 2025
    Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
    Hillary Mantel does a wonderful job in telling a story. With that being said, her writing style is lacking. Reading her books, especially this one, was both tedious and laborious. In the editing process, one is taught to remove anything that is not essential to the story. In this case, at least 300 pages should have been removed.
    One person found this helpful
    Report
  • Reviewed in the United States on May 12, 2020
    Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
    This book concludes Hilary Mantel’s trilogy about Thomas Cromwell. Mantel artfully places the reader in the room as Cromwell, a lowly-born blacksmith’s son, becomes Henry VIII’s proxy to further the King’s interests, whether they be financial, marital, theological, or emotional. Unfortunately for him, he, Cromwell, the Lord Privy Seal is also subject to his master’s mercurial nature. In this last book, the tables finally turn, and his enemies, Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, and Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, get the upper hand and turn Henry against him.

    As the book opens, Anne Boleyn has just been beheaded, and Cromwell uses his political schemes to improve both his own family’s fortune as well as the King’s. He continues to garnish abbeys and Catholic real estate and divide the riches among the nobility. Henry marries Jane Seymour, from a noble English family, which brings marital happiness but does little to secure England’s increasingly fractious position against France and Spain. Upon Seymour’s death after childbirth, the stage is set for Henry to start looking for another wife, this time to consolidate an alliance with Germany. He chooses Anne of Cleves, a choice Cromwell is wary of, and this ill-conceived match begins Cromwell’s downfall.

    This historical fiction novel puts flesh on a figure known for his dizzying rise from poverty to become King Henry’s most trusted confidante and advisor, Thomas Cromwell, Lord Privy Seal. Mantel writes sharp, witty dialogue that reveals her characters’ strengths and weaknesses. Cromwell, as she portrays him, is visited by his past in dreams and in waking, seeing the ghosts of friends, family, and even Bishop Wolsey, whom he once served. He is a crafty maneuverer, an ambitious schemer, and a skilled reader of the King’s whims and moods. Until the day comes that he falls out of Henry’s favor.

    I wouldn’t recommend reading this book before reading the first two in the series. It takes some effort to retain the names of all the courtiers, politicians, clergy, and principal players in the Cromwell drama, but Mantel has provided a helpful guide. That said, this is an outstanding conclusion to the trilogy. I recommend the series to anyone who appreciates masterful writing and has an interest in English history.
    10 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on February 26, 2025
    Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
    I haven’t read this book yet but I know it’ll be as good as the other books in the series.

Top reviews from other countries

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  • Tomichan Matheikal
    5.0 out of 5 stars Masterpiece
    Reviewed in India on September 11, 2020
    This grand finale to the Cromwell trilogy is just superb. While the first two volumes told us the story of Cromwell's rise in rather fast-paced plots, this is slow and quite poetic. This is about the fall of the tragic hero. Mantel makes Cromwell a tragic hero, a man whose tragic flaw brought him down. He rose higher than the king himself. The story is told with amazing dexterity. The history of the time comes alive in this bulky novel. Give it time and you'll relish it. It's not a potboiler.
  • An Du
    5.0 out of 5 stars Great literature for the modern world
    Reviewed in Canada on March 27, 2020
    This third volume of the Hilary Mantel’s great masterpiece on the life & times of Thomas Cromwell, who rose from a modest birth to become one of Henry VIII's principal court councillors is once again full of intrigue and excitement.

    A deeply satisfying & rewarding read it reveals the viciousness of the past English monarchy & its abject decadence. The present English kingdom whose roots are completely entwined in the former ones (a duke of Norfolk still exists as I write) deserves to be examined carefully. This work of literature may help! It is high time this vile caste system is abolished as well as the disgusting appropriation of wealth it survives on. All it does is is to perpetuate the immoral disparity of incomes in what is supposed to be a democracy.

    The trilogy also illustrates beautifully how we humans will go to extreme actions to promote whatever religion we believe in. Often, in so doing, disregarding the very essence of the creed we adhere to. This remains, unfortunately, a current theme in our present so-called humanist world…

    I hope Mantel wins another Booker prize as she did with each of the first two volumes. She deserves it!
    There are many lessons to be learned from these books, and the prose transports the reader back to early Tudor times with the ceremonies of the court, the corruption of its members & the ways of its nasty reformation.
  • gloria
    5.0 out of 5 stars eccellente
    Reviewed in Italy on August 8, 2022
    5 stelle per diversi motivi: consegnato prima del previsto, conforme a quanto descritto e con carattere leggibili senza fatica. Un romanzo che può appassionare, ben scritto .L'ultimo di una trilogia. Riguardo i primi due volumi ho visto la versione cinematografica della BBC, comprato sempre con Amazon. Una sorpresa gradita con attori convincenti.
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  • A.J. Sefton
    5.0 out of 5 stars Masterpiece - haven't felt this sad since Harry Potter...
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 24, 2020
    The final part of this wonderful trilogy opens with the beheading of Anne Boleyn. Ah, Cromwell. Welcome back, my old friend.​

    ​The story about King Henry VIII's quest for power and an heir concludes in this hefty volume. What makes this different from the raft of other books about this glamorous Tudor monarch who changed England forever is that it is from the perspective of his chief adviser, Thomas Cromwell. In the previous books (Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies) we see him rise from a wily lad from Putney, a blacksmith's son, to become a lord, as he is in this book. The title is given as a reward for his handling of the dilemma Henry finds himself in, namely, how to dispose of his two wives who have failed to provide a male heir.

    With the two marriages cancelled out, the children - two princesses - are set at the same level as Henry's other illegitimate children and therefore the line of succession becomes an open field. The political state in England is intense, with the thwarted Protestant families of Anne Boleyn against the Spanish Catholic families fighting the corner for Princess Mary. Added to that is the son who was born outside of wedlock whose family see him in as much of a chance as the the 'former' princesses. And this sticky situation is for Cromwell to sort out.

    He realises that fortunes can turn quickly in Tudor England and Cromwell's head could be next on the block. He has to have his wits about him if he is to survive, so he remains alert and keeps a knife close to his heart. Sometimes the king needs to be assured that God is happy with his decisions as well. The complexities are expressed well and the family trees and who's who at the beginning of the book are helpful if you are not fully aware of the players in this time in history. I have the advantage of knowing it very well, having taught it for years to 'A' Level classes, but it could be confusing without the added script and charts.

    A political and tense story, told with the grandeur it deserves in the way only Hilary Mantel can do it. Her writing style remains unique and is part of the appeal. Initially, in the first book, 'He, Cromwell' seemed very jarring and unnecessary. Now it is comfortable and part of Cromwell's story and I would miss it if it were not here. The detail is exquisite as is the narrative. My favourite scene is a strange little section near the beginning when Cromwell has bought a tabby cat, which escapes from his house. It climbs a tree and people try to catch it with a net. The imagery of the cat looking through the spaces in the net as it sits on a branch is simply poetic.

    Cromwell, Henry and the other characters are portrayed fully and expanded by every ounce of information available to historians. I particularly like how the Lady Mary is described as sometimes appearing twice her age and other times as an underdeveloped child. Every event, rumour and suspicion is portrayed as it would have been at the time, so the sense of time and place is as perfect as it can be, including the superstitions and beliefs that drove folk at that time. In spite of the perfectly captured Early Modern Era there is also, paradoxically, a feel of intimacy, of being there, of smelling the room and places where the story unfolds. This is Mantel's special power.

    The conclusion to the trilogy takes an overview and puts everything in perspective, the story of Cromwell and Henry's reign. It is a fitting end to a masterpiece of art, of history and of humanity. Although I knew the ending I experienced it with fresh eyes. Goodbye my friend, thank you for the journey. He, Cromwell, is no more.
  • Ana Paula
    5.0 out of 5 stars Chegou rápido e perfeito
    Reviewed in Brazil on August 8, 2020
    Chegou rápido e perfeito