Tag Archives: King Henry VIII

Lamentation by C.J. Sansom

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Lamentation Book CoverLamentation by C.J. Sansom was published in 2014 and it’s the sixth book in the Shardlake series.

Shardlake has been employed by Queen Catherine Parr, supposedly to track down a valuable ring of hers which has been stolen, but in reality he is searching for a book which she has written and which could be construed as a work of heresy. Catherine has plenty of enemies within the court, as ever King Henry VIII’s supposed loyal courtiers are intent on manipulating him for their own familial advantage.

The Queen will be in danger of being burnt at the stake for heresy if she can’t find her stolen book which is called The Lamentations of a Sinner, and so might Shardlake. She regrets not having burnt it when she could.

In this one Shardlake gets involved with men who are a lot more dangerous than he realises, and he and his male employees end up being outfought by men who are hardened fighters compared with them.

This was a good one although for my liking there was a bit too much jeapordy involved for Shardlake and Barak.

I love the historical notes at the back of these books. Sansom certainly put in a lot of research time and his description of Henry VIII in his final year or so seem very authentic and likely.

Sovereign by C.J. Sansom

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Sovereign Book CoverSovereign by C.J. Sansom was first published in 2006 and it’s the third book in the Shardlake series.

It’s 1541 and Shardlake and his assistant Jack Barak have been riding for five days, making their way to the north of England. It’s a particularly gruelling journey as the summer has been so wet, the roads are bad. Shardlake is on a mission for Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and he wants to get to York before  King Henry VIII does. After the revolts in the north Henry is making his way there, the revolt has been quelled and this Royal Progress is to consolidate his power. He’s also expecting to meet with his nephew the Scottish King James V, but James isn’t daft enough to travel into England.

Not everyone has been forgiven though, Sir Edward Broderick is languishing in a filthy prison cell, waiting to be transferred to the Tower in London, and it’s Shardlake’s job to make sure that Broderick doesn’t die before he’s taken to London for interrogation and torture in the Tower. It’s a job that horrifies Shardlake, but he has troubles of his own, it seems that someone is trying to kill him.

This is a fairly hefty book at 658 pages, but it really doesn’t seem that long, it’s so well written the whole thing flows smoothly.  Sansom imagines the arrival of the King and his court, the army and masses of followers, and the effect that his presence has on the people who witness his arrival so well. People couldn’t even look at him, and shook in terror. At this time Henry was married to his fifth wife Katherine Howard, and her silly shenanigans come into the tale too. Sansom also didn’t ignore the problems that so many people descending on a place caused, specifically the amount of sewage involved. There’s more involved in the plot, but that’s as much as I’m going to say.

I’m so glad that I didn’t read this series as they were published because now I don’t have to wait for the next book to be published, I’ve already borrowed it from the library.

 

The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel

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I finished The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel this afternoon, so that took me eight days to read the 882 pages, I could have been faster, but I savoured every word. This last book in her Thomas Cromwell trilogy was well worth waiting for, but I can hardly believe that it has been eight years since Bring Up the Bodies was published. I don’t go in for much in the way of re-reading but I intend to read the whole trilogy again at some point in the future.

If you’re at all interested in the history of the Tudors then you obviously know how this story ends, but despite that 874 pages before Cromwell’s execution are still a riveting read and from about half-way through I slowed down my reading, not wanting the book to finish and at the end I felt quite bereft, knowing that I was going to miss being in Cromwell’s company.

Well, none of us is perfect and he had a lot of flaws, but given the circumstances he could have been an awful lot worse than he was and in the end it was his lack of brutality and cruelty to others at Henry’s court that brought his downfall.

Cromwell had always been able to see that given Henry’s nature the possibility of swiftly falling out of the king’s favour was almost inevitable, he could have sailed to Italy or some other European country with some of his wealth, but he left it too late as he loved being at the centre of power.

Throughout the book Cromwell thinks back to scenes in his life from his childhood on, replaying the abuses that he had to put up with from his blacksmith father Walter, and his life in Italy as a young man, the loss of his wife and daughters and before that the loss of his ‘Anselma’, for me this had the effect of a man drowning and seeing his past life playing out in front of him. He could clearly see where he had gone wrong, what he should have done differently in his incredible career but at the time he didn’t think he could do anything different. In reality though he knew that if Henry wanted rid of someone it was going to happen, there was no getting away from it.

I was really glad that Hilary Mantel wrote three and a half pages of author’s notes explaining what had happened to many of the other characters in the book, as it saved me from having to look them all up. She explained that she had been given encouragement from many historians, academics, curators and actors over the years which had included many distinguished names but had decided not to compile a list of acknowledgments. She thought that it would be like a vulgar exercise in name-dropping. I think that’s a bit of a shame as I imagine that if I had been one of those people I would have been expecting such an acknowledgement, and as a reader I would have been interested to know who had contributed help over the years.

Anyway, I suspect that this one will also win the Booker, it’s a great read.