Wolf Hall

By: Hilary Mantel

Narrated by: Simon Slater

Length: 24 hrs and 14 mins

Publisher's summary

In the ruthless arena of King Henry VIII's court, only one man dares to gamble his life to win the king's favor and ascend to the heights of political powerEngland in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years, and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe opposes him. The quest for the king's freedom destroys his adviser, the brilliant Cardinal Wolsey, and leaves a power vacuum. Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell. Cromwell is a wholly original man, a charmer and a bully, both idealist and opportunist, astute in reading people and a demon of energy: he is also a consummate politician, hardened by his personal losses, implacable in his ambition. But Henry is volatile: one day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell helps him break the opposition, but what will be the price of his triumph? In inimitable style, Hilary Mantel presents a picture of a half-made society on the cusp of change, where individuals fight or embrace their fate with passion and courage.

With a vast array of characters, overflowing with incident, the novel re-creates an era when the personal and political are separated by a hairbreadth, where success brings unlimited power but a single failure means death.

Download the accompanying reference guide.

©2009 Hilary Mantel (P)2009 Macmillan Audio

The Magnificent Wolf Hall

A delicious confection of a book. How I love it. It takes a special writer to breathe exquisite life into an over-familiar tale. And the prose is in the present tense, which I usually find annoying. But this book just leaves me begging for more.

Edge-of-my-seat listen

I have read many, many novels about Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn and enjoyed most; however none have I listened to with such joy, excitement, and anticipation. Simon Slater did an excellent job, his performance kept me breathlessly waiting for the next moment. I was hesitate to buy Wolf Hall because I read it in print. This listening experience made me appreciate Mandel's beautifully written novel. Love, Luv luv it.

Revealing

Tho this work is historical fiction, the basic history is apparently accurate. This is my favorite & most interesting way to learn history.

Wow! So much better than the book.

The audio brings this story and the author's style to life. I could not read the print version because of the lack of quotation marks and other odd grammatical vehicles, though the prose is excellent. Too distracting. But not so with the audio. Vance does the author justice and puts Cromwell smack in your head. I have seen a different side to Cromwell and enjoyed this well-researched, well written story of King Henry VIII's advisor. Brilliant.

A Great Instructional Book on How to Make Friends and Keep Your Heads

I would listen to Wolf Hall at night in bed imagining each character in front of me playing their part, from Cromwell to Wossely to Anne to Henry to Moore. Tragic but delightful!

One of the best

I’m an avid consumer of everything Wolf Hall- the tv show, the books, and the audio books. All perfect. I’ve probably listened to this series fifty times. The narration in this book of the series transforms what is a wonderful book into perfection. I wish the entire series had used this actor. Highly recommend.

One of the finest audiobooks I have heard

I had already read and enjoyed Wolf Hall, but wanted to experience it through a narrator as well. I am so glad that I did! This is hands down, one of the best audiobooks in my library. Simon Slater is a marvelous narrator. Although it took me a little while to get used to his 'Cromwell' voice, it made me feel as if I actually was getting to know the man. For those unfamiliar with the story, Cromwell is the protagonist and it shows him as a man who is caught between beliefs and the king and with a huge desire to protect his family, pay back the nobles who brought down his beloved master Cardinal Woolsey and to advance and safeguard his country. In most histories, Cromwell is shown as a scheming, grasping man and Thomas Moore, despite the atrocities he committed in the name of his religious beliefs is almost always shown as a saintly character.

Not so here- Moore is a sanctimonious academic snob who bullies his household. Cardinal Woolsey is a wealthy and satisfied prince of the church before his downfall, but also kind and wise. Simon Slater's voices for ALL of his characters are wonderful, but he outdoes himself with Moore and Woolsey.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough if you are interested in history, religion and politics and learning the many different viewpoints of this time period, as well as a wonderful slice of how life was lived in the 1500s in England. Simon Slater is such an excellent narrator- I will be seeking out his work on other books. His voice, coupled with the excellent writing made me fall just a little in love with ugly Thomas Cromwell!

A unique perspective of history

I am a fan of all things Tudor, so had consumed many fiction (e.g. Phillipa Gregory) and non-fiction (e.g. Jane Dunn) about Henry VIII and his offspring. This book is different from any I have read before. This is not just another bodice-ripping period piece like Showtime's The Tudors, it is actually beautifully written literature. A warning though, it may be difficult to keep track of the many characters without already being familiar with King Henry's court during the time of his separation from Katherine and marriage to Anne Boleyn. Excellent book all around!

Authorial hubris

One of the best stories in history should have been riveting. Although well researched and historically accurate, Mantel's insistence on using personal pronouns without a referent requires constant rereading (rewinding) once the reader figures out who she's talking about. Rather than a stylistic innovation it only comes across as literary affectation that detracts from the readers ability to become engrossed in the narrative. Should have been five stars with a good editor putting her foot down with the author.

"Beneath everything, another history"

Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall (2009) is a brilliant historical novel, an absorbing account of the first eight or so years of Thomas Cromwell's career during the 1520s and early 1530s, first as the lawyer man of business for Bishop Wolsey and then as an increasingly indispensable and close advisor to King Henry VIII. It is a time of seismic change for England, with Henry trying to annul his twenty-year marriage to Catherine of Aragorn so he can marry a younger Anne Boleyn to get the male heir Catherine hasn't produced, which involves bribing, cajoling, and threatening the Pope to get his sanction and then when that proves difficult, thinking about making Henry the head of a Church of England. Despite the fact that most people know generally what happened with Henry, his wives, and the church, etc., Mantel's story-telling skills, extensive research, keen eye for detail, and deep empathy for her very human characters make the history/story fresh and compelling.

From the very first chapter, in which boy Cromwell is savagely beaten and kicked by his alcoholic blacksmith father Walter ("By the blood of creeping Christ, stand on your feet!"), Mantel makes us care for the man who is usually the chief Machiavellian villain of 16th-century British history. Mantel works into her main narrative pieces of Cromwell's colorful past (running away as a young teen to become a mercenary fighting for France, living by his wits in Italy, becoming an international merchant and lawyer, and finally returning after twelve years to England due to a dice roll). In addition to looking "like a man who knows how to cut up a carcass" and possessing a body solid as a sea wall and a stare "the equivalent of a kick," Mantel's Cromwell has a retentive memory, facility with languages, practical business sense, unaffected manner, fine organizational and managerial skills, loyalty to his friends and masters, sympathy for children, women, and the poor, and knack for being in the right place at the right time with the right solution. He is also curious about everything from mundane matters like the making of French wafers to arcane ones like the making of a memory machine. As the Duke of Norfolk says, "Damn it all, Cromwell, why do you have to be such . . . a person?"

Mantel also depicts a new and complex Thomas More, here no Man for all Seasons idealistic and integrity-filled martyr for conscience! This More embeds spies into people's households and tortures and burns “heretics” (whereas Cromwell is sympathetic with free-thinking people), and is a hair-shirt wearing, pleasure avoiding, misogynistic domestic tyrant (whereas Cromwell loves good food and well-made things and his wife and daughters).

Mantel writes a potent, graceful, and pleasurable prose. Here are some of my favorite examples.

The sea: "He will remember his first sight of the open sea, a gray wrinkled vastness, like the residue of a dream."

The Duke of Norfolk: "Flint-faced and keen-eyed, he is as lean as a gnawed bone and as cold as an ax head. His joints seem knitted together of supple chain links, and indeed he rattles a little as he moves, for his clothes conceal relics: in tiny jeweled cases he has shavings of skin and snippets of hair, and set into medallions he wears splinters of martyrs' bones."

A numinous world: “The rocking of the boat beneath them is imperceptible. The flags are limp; it is a still morning, misty and dappled, and where the light touches flesh or linen or fresh leaves, there is a sheen like the sheen on an eggshell: the whole world luminous, its angles softened, its scent watery and green.”

Laws: “When you are writing laws you are testing words to find their utmost power. Like spells, they have to make things happen in the real world and like spells they only work if people believe in them.”

Silence: "A lute retains, in its bowl, the notes it has played. The viol, in its strings, holds a concord. A shriveled petal can hold its scent, a prayer can rattle with curses; an empty house, when the owners have gone out, can still be loud with ghosts."

Sympathy: "Comfort is often, he finds, imparted at the cost of a flea or two."

British History: "It all begins in slaughter."

I suspect that Mantel could make anything work in anything she writes. For instance, apart from Cromwell's flashbacks, she writes her epic history in the present tense. And her narrator always refers to Cromwell as "he," never as Thomas or Cromwell. It can be tricky to follow things when she refers to a male character by name or title in one sentence and then to Cromwell as "he" in the next, but after you learn "his" personality and point of view, it's not difficult to grasp the referent of most of Mantel's "hes."

Why Wolf Hall? Although Cromwell seems to care for Jane Seymour, whose family lives in Wolf Hall, Jane does not play a big role in the novel, and only on the last page is he planning to stay there for a few days. Perhaps Wolf Hall represents something of Cromwell's own will, private pleasure, and romantic heart, all of which must usually be restrained as he goes about the Cardinal and especially the King's business?

The audiobook reader, Simon Slater, does an excellent job with the different voices of the large cast of characters, making them--male and female, old and young, aristocratic and common, English and foreign--sound like different real people. Among my favorites are his Cromwell (tough, intelligent, witty), More (learned, snide, superior), Wosley (John Geilgud channeling Oscar Wilde), Catherine (strong, sharp, Spanish), Norfolk (proud, merciless, choleric), Anne Boleyn ("unforgiving, hard to please, easy to offend"), and Mary Boleyn (sad, flirtatious, mischievous).

I recommend Wolf Hall to anyone interested in British history or in fine literature full of complex characters and rich writing.