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Wolf Hall (2009) is a multi-award winning historical novel by English author Hilary Mantel, published by Fourth Estate, named after the Seymour family seat of Wolfhall or Wulfhall in Wiltshire. Set in the period from 1500 to 1535, Wolf Hall is a fictionalised biography documenting the rapid rise to power of Thomas Cromwell in the court of Henry VIII through to the death of Sir Thomas More. The novel won both the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.[1][2] In 2012, The Observer named it as one of "The 10 best historical novels".[3]
The book is the first in a planned trilogy; the sequel Bring Up the Bodies was published in 2012.[4]
Born to a working-class family of no position or name, Cromwell rose to become the right-hand man of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, adviser to the King. He survived Wolsey's fall from grace to eventually take his place as the most powerful of Henry's ministers. In that role, he oversaw Henry's divorce from Catherine of Aragon and subsequent marriage to Anne Boleyn, the English church's break with Rome and the dissolution of the monasteries.
Historical and literary accounts in the following centuries have not been kind to Cromwell; in Robert Bolt's well-known play A Man for All Seasons he is portrayed as the calculating, unprincipled opposite of Thomas More's honour and rectitude.
Mantel's novel offers an alternative to that characterisation, a more intimate portrait of Cromwell as a pragmatic and talented man attempting to serve king and country amid the political machinations of Henry's court and the religious upheavals of the Protestant reformation.
Mantel spent five years researching and writing the book; the trickiest part, she said in an interview with the the Duke of Suffolk at the moment? You can't have him in London if he's supposed to be somewhere else", she explained.
Wolf Hall includes a large cast of fictionalised historical persons. In addition to those already mentioned, prominent characters include:
The title comes from the name of the Seymour family seat at Wolf Hall or Wulfhall in Wiltshire; the title's allusion to the old Latin saying "Man is wolf to man" serves as a constant reminder of the dangerously opportunistic nature of the world through which Cromwell navigates.[6] None of the action occurs at Wolf Hall.
Stage
In January 2013 the RSC announced that it would stage adaptations by Mike Poulton of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies in its Winter season.[14]
Tony Award-winning producers Jeffrey Richards and Jerry Frankel are aiming to bring the London productions of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies to Broadway's Winter Garden Theatre in spring 2015. The double-bill will be re-titled Wolf Hall, Parts 1 and 2 for American audiences.[15]
Television
In 2012 the BBC announced that it would be adapting Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies for BBC Two, with an expected broadcast date of 2015.[16] On 8 March 2013, the BBC reported that Mark Rylance had been cast as Thomas Cromwell.[17]
Man Booker Prize, J. M. Coetzee, Derbyshire, Margaret Thatcher, University of Sheffield
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Hilary Mantel, Man Booker Prize, Wolf Hall, Costa Book Awards, Historical Fiction
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