Wolf Hall

Wolf Hallby Hilary MantelThe 2009 Booker winner is the first in a series of novels (the second, Bring Up the Bodies, has just been published) presenting the life of Tudor statesman Thomas Cromwell. With remarkable immediacy, Mantel inhabits the restless, brilliant, ambitious mind of her subject, so that we see the events of Tudor history - notably Henry VIII’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon - unfold through his eyes. Mantel’s Cromwell emerges as a force for progress at a time when, arguably, a recognisably modern British identity was established