Thomas Cromwell is one of the most famous - or notorious - figures in English history. Born in obscurity in Putney, he became a fixer for Cardinal Wolsey in the 1520s and remained intensely loyal to his memory even when Wolsey had fallen for failing to solve Henry VIII's 'Great Matter' - lack of a male heir and efforts to repudiate his wife Katherine of Aragon. Henry too appreciated Cromwell's talent and promoted him to a series of ever greater offices, such that in the 1530s he was effectively running the country for the King.
Diarmaid MacCulloch is Emeritus Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford University, and Fellow of St Cross College and of Campion Hall. His Thomas Cranmer (1996) won the Whitbread Biography Prize, the James Tait Black Prize and the Duff Cooper Prize; Reformation- Europe's House Divided 1490-1700 (2004) won the Wolfson Prize and the British Academy Prize. A History of Christianity (2010), which was adapted into a six-part BBC television series, was awarded the Cundill and Hessell-Tiltman Prizes. He was knighted in 2012 and was awarded the Norton Medlicott Medal by the Historical Association in 2022.
Sir Diarmaid MacCulloch is one of finest historians in the
English-speaking world and preeminent in the area of the English
Reformation. He has combined his expertise in 16th-century history
with a compelling literary style in his latest book ... the
definitive work on Henry VIII's great minister and an extraordinary
insight into the politics and religion of the age, and of any age
for that matter. Thomas Cromwell's somewhat dark reputation was
given a new and bright shine by Hilary Mantel in the Wolf Hall
trilogy and this life takes us from the fictional into the
authentic; its triumph is that it is just as thrilling and equally
stimulating and challenging. A profoundly important book.
*Spectator*
Meticulous and magisterial ... If this is not the definitive
biography, I don't know what that would look like
*Literary Review*
Triumphant and definitive ... a masterpiece of documentary
detective-work, which buzzes with the excitement of a great
historian immersed in archives
*Sunday Times*
A model of classical historical biography at its finest
*New Statesman*
The definitive biography ... exhaustively researched and superbly
written
*Sunday Times (Books of the Year)*
The Tudor minister brought to fictional life in Wolf Hall is given
a definitive scholarly treatment in this long-awaited, masterful,
wry biography
*Daily Telegraph (Books of the Year)*
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