Historical Fiction

After my immersion in the fiction of Walter Scott I caught up with the 2012 Booker shortlist. I have not read Season of Mists yet but enjoyed all the others. So Bring up the Bodies emerges as winner. I felt this second volume in the court career of Thomas Cromwell achieved more than Wolf Hall was able to do. Cromwell was seemingly at court, the king’s right hand man, but all the while knowing he was only as secure as his last achievement pleased the king. In an imaginative recreation of how Cromwell might have reacted and behaved this novel succeeds through the images, scenery and swirling voices of suspicion.

The court politics