Thomas Cromwell is an avatar for the diligent technocrat, now romanticised by many anxious voters
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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. But then, the politics of his rise and fall are liable to resonate in almost any era: if his rival, Sir Thomas More, was a man for all seasons, Cromwell is a character for the ages.
Geoffrey Elton, one of the leading historians of Ms Mantel’s period, argued that Cromwell’s time in office marked the transition between the medieval model of government based in the king’s household, and a professional bureaucracy with its own institutional apparatus. The Cromwell of the novels straddles both arrangements. He suavely manages the monarch—“One must anticipate his desires,” he explains in “Bring Up the Bodies”—while attacking his awesome workload with Stakhanovite zeal.
This counter-trend can be traced to the financial crisis, when central bankers came to the fore in stabilising the global economy—a period that coincided with the writing and publication of “Wolf Hall” , the first novel in the trilogy.
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