WOLF HALL

The Tudors are everywhere, it seems. Both Helen Mirren and Cate Blanchett have played Elizabeth 1 on film; Philippa Gregory has written best selling books on the period, and "The Other Boleyn Girl" was made into a film; I have read Alison Weir on Henry VIII; and the second series of the award-winning "The Tudors" is currently showing on Danish television (the first series was sent out under the title "Sex and Intrigue" - of which there was much - but name-recognition is taking hold in Scandinavia as well). Now comes Wolf Hall, a 650 page novel from Hilary Mantel, which won the 2009 Man Booker prize, and which I have just read.

As a royal dynasty, the Tudors were essentially Welsh lads on the make. Owen Tudor started the ball rolling by marrying the widow of Henry V, hero of Agincourt; his son then married Margaret Beaufort, also a woman with royal connections. Having snuck into the royal family by the back door, as it were, they became the leading beneficiaries of the fifteenth century aristocratic slaughter brilliantly depicted by Shakespeare and known as the Wars of the Roses. Henry VI (Lancastrian) inherited the Valois tendency to insanity, and his only son was killed in battle at the age of 17; Edward IV (Yorkist) took over from Henry until his own death, but his two young sons (the Princes in the Tower) were bumped off by their uncle Richard III; while Warwick the Kingmaker (who flitted between the two camps) conveniently died in battle without male heirs. When Owen Tudor's grandson Henry won a decisive victory at Bosworth Field in 1485, killing Richard in the process, the way forward to the throne was clear. He was crowned on the battlefield as Henry VII, and later married the eldest daughter of Edward IV. That should have made the Tudors' position secure. However, there were still males around with direct claims to the throne, which might in some people's eyes have outweighed the indirect ones of the upstart Welsh lads. The executions of Edward of Warwick by Henry VII, and of the Duke of Buckingham, Duke of Suffolk and the Pole family by his son Henry VIII, were all prompted by their participation - real or imagined - in a resumption of the Wars of the Roses, with the throne as the prize.

The combination of dynastic fragility and promotion of men of low birth reached its apogee in the reign of Henry VIII, king of England from 1509 to 1547. Henry was his father's second son and so was originally brought up for a career in the church. However, when his elder brother Arthur unexpectedly died at the age of 15 in April 1502, Henry inherited both Arthur's claim to the throne and his wife of four months, Katherine of Aragon. From that one event flowed much of the history of England for the next 50 years. Knowing where his family had come from, Henry was convinced that a legitimate male heir was absolutely vital for the kingdom's survival; yet the one thing he and Katherine could not do was produce a son together.

To help him in his "cause", Henry turned to a succession of other lads on the make, rather than the limited cadre of old aristocratic families that had traditionally occupied the great offices of state and church. Charles Brandon, his boyhood playmate, married his sister without asking his permission, yet kept his head and was made Duke of Suffolk. Thomas Wolsey was a butcher's son from Ipswich, who rose rapidly through the church to become Archbishop of York and a Cardinal, as well as Lord Chancellor for almost 15 years. He was replaced by Sir Thomas More, son of a lawyer and the first ever non-ecclesiastic in the job. Finally, there was Thomas Cromwell, son of a blacksmith, who rose to be Henry's Chief Minister from 1532-40 and was created Earl of Essex shortly before his death.

Against the background of the Europe-wide ferment of the Reformation, these men collectively made huge changes to England; to the law, to religion and religious life, to the structure of the country. Henry ended up having six wives, an unprecedented monarchical achievement, eventually getting a son by his third wife Jane Seymour. The church split from Rome, thereby creating that curious hybrid within Christianity called Anglicanism, an essentially catholic doctrine, but one that reports to the British monarch as its head. The monasteries were dissolved, and their vast assets given to the Crown for disposal. By the Statute of Wills it became possible for the first time to devise real property (i.e. land), instead of being bound by the iron rules of feudal inheritance (the common law tradition, whereby you have complete freedom to leave your property to whomever you like, is something which separates the United Kingdom from the rest of the E.U. today). And Wales, originally conquered more than two centuries earlier, was bound so tightly into the fabric of England that the policies of the last Labour Government for devolution within the United Kingdom were inevitably much different in Wales than in Scotland.

Wolf Hall takes the story from the fall of Cardinal Wolsey in 1529 for failing to obtain papal consent to Henry's divorce from Katherine of Aragon to the execution of Sir Thomas More in 1535 for not accepting Henry's new position as head of the church in England. It is written through the eyes of Thomas Cromwell, the eminence grise of the new order, as he works his way up from Wolsey's efficient protege to the post of Master Secretary and general top dog. Henry is on his second wife, Anne Boleyn, but still can't get a son; her execution, four more wives, the dissolution of the monasteries, and Cromwell's own downfall are all in the future, and await the book's intended sequel. It is masterfully written, and gripping stuff; I read it in less than a week.

And Wolf Hall itself? This is the family home of the Seymours, which - as the book ends - the court is about to visit for the first time. It is a neat literary trick to have as the title something which doesn't appear until the end. But that's the whole point. We all know how the story ends, it's the getting there that we want to enjoy.

Walter Blotscher