#wolhhalledit

[wolfhalledits]

Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell in WOLF HALL (2015)

"I hazard that when Cromwell’s household heard of his arrest in June 1540, they began a systematic process of destroying the out - tray of his principal archive, much aided by the fact that two of his own officers were left in charge of it for least another year. Their hope would have been to save their master from destruction, for a man is much more easily convicted by his own writings than by the letters he has received. The royal confiscation team would not initially have noticed the character of the huge quantities of papers deferentially presented for their inspection when they arrived at the door. 2 It was a good try, although it did not succeed. The result is that amid the torrent of paperwork through which the conscientious biographer wades to recapture what is left of Thomas Cromwell, the man’s own voice is largely missing. We hear more of it out of Lord Lisle’s papers than in Cromwell’s own. Hilary Mantel has sensitively captured this quality in Thomas Cromwell’s archive in her novels: her Cromwell is pre - eminently an observer, even of himself, not ‘I’ but ‘he’." — MacCulloch, D. (2018). Thomas Cromwell: a life. Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Books, [London]

[wolfhalledits]

'WOLF HALL' RECAP — 1x04 'The Devil's Spit' air date — 11 February 2015 dir. Peter Kosminsky

In 1533, Anne Boleyn has given birth to a daughter, much to King Henry VIII's disdain. As Anne's paranoia over her inability to produce a son grows, Thomas Cromwell tries to convince Sir Thomas More to show approval for the royal marriage.