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The Wolf hides his teeth

Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall was the literary sensation of 2009, and the excitement didn’t abate with the publication of its follow-up, Bring Up The Bodies, in 2012. In some ways the anti- ‘A Man For All Seasons’, Wolf Hall recasts the traditionally maligned Thomas Cromwell as a sympathetic character, quietly pragmatic in the face of the class snobbery of the Tudor courts, and fiercely loyal to his mentor Cardinal Wolsey.

The story covers the now-familiar ground of Henry VIII’s split from Rome and disastrous marriages, but Mantel’s skill as a writer and researcher has ensured her books will be remembered long after more lightweight retellings are forgotten. The same could be said for the new TV adaptation, running on Wednesday evenings on BBC 2 since January.

I haven’t read Wolf Hall or its successor (the only Mantel I’ve read is an obscure early novel set in Saudi Arabia) so I’m coming to the series without much background knowledge other than Alison Weir’s history of the fall of Anne Boleyn. The latter was a useful primer, but there are still many characters and situations that are unfamiliar to me. It doesn’t really matter though, because the story is gripping enough even without a dramatis personae.

Director Peter Kosminsky steers well clear of ‘sexing up’ the material, resulting in an understated, authentic-feeling but nonetheless compelling story. The timeline is complex and moves around a lot - some familiarity with the books or the historical period is recommended - but the editing is so elegant that the jumps don’t feel jarring. I reviewed Kosminsky’s series ‘The Promise’ about the founding of modern Israel a couple of years ago and was impressed with its scope and intelligence, if disappointed in its inability to give its Arab characters the same depth as its Jewish ones. There are some hints of that same urge to simplify in 'Wolf Hall', albeit in the opposite direction. Whereas in ‘The Promise’ the Arab characters were portrayed as saintly to the point of simpleness, in 'Wolf Hall' Thomas More and his coterie are cartoonishly nasty, smirking at Cromwell’s ‘low’ birth and doing everything short of steepling their fingers like supervillains. Thomas More being a villain isn’t the issue, but he needs to be a complex villain in order to be believable.

The contrast is especially stark when Anton Lesser’s performance of Thomas More comes up against Mark Rylance’s as Cromwell. The latter’s ability to navigate the treacherous intrigues of Henry’s court is explained in this version of history by a wonderfully watchful performance by Rylance. Thomas is quiet and reserved, mysterious to even his family, but he is constantly observing and absorbing what he needs to know in order to survive. Survival isn’t his only motivation though - he is a committed (if circumspect) believer in Church reform, smuggling Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament into his home and encouraging Henry’s avarice towards the monasteries in a sincere effort to dismantle their feudal power and redistribute their wealth. He is also motivated by loyalty to Cardinal Wolsey (played by Jonathan Pryce), a fellow ‘low-born’ man and a kind of mentor to the young lawyer (the series has fun with how Cromwell changes his job description every few years in order to finagle his way into spheres of influence). Wolsey’s days are numbered once Anne Boleyn sets her mind on becoming Queen, but Cromwell stays loyal and quietly vows to avenge him. How the story will treat the historically controversial issue of Cromwell’s role in Boleyn’s eventual fall will be interesting to see.

Speaking of Anne Boleyn, Kosminsky stalwart Claire Foy turns in a delightfully spiky performance of the imperious, determined young woman. Eschewing any approximation of conventional seductiveness, Foy’s Boleyn is a streak of loud, clever arrogance bursting through the murky, hushed double-dealing of Henry’s court. It’s an interpretation that hews closer to what we know of the real Boleyn’s character and provides an explanation for Damian Lewis’ surprisingly milquetoast Henry’s infatuation with her. Lewis seems to be playing Henry with plenty of understatement for the early part of the series, but hints of his megalomania and unpredictability are already beginning to show. In his interactions with Henry, Rylance’s Cromwell plays the classic manipulator’s trick of convincing Henry that implementing Cromwell’s plans was, in fact, the king’s idea all along. Seeing Henry fall in line without even realising he’s being pulled is delightful. It’s a credit to Rylance’s quiet charm that this somewhat terrifying skill endears him all the more to the audience.

You can already see how Cromwell’s cunning rectitude will defeat the equally clever but more impulsive Boleyn’s scheming. Seeing those two face off will definitely be a highlight of the series. The Thomas Cromwell of ‘Wolf Hall’ is someone who’s been through the wringer personally and in public life, and his patience for the pampered man-children of the Tudor court is running out. It’ll be interesting to see how he enacts his revenge - probably slowly, quietly, and ultimately getting off scot-free.

go read the first chapter of my dumb mclennon britpop au hooray

White Feathers

My Amazon review for White Feathers, a super new WWI-set novel dealing with (among other things) the practice of shaming non-combatant men into joining up by encouraging the women in their lives to present them with a white feather, symbolising their supposed cowardice. I really enjoyed this novel - as I say in the review, it's that rare beast, a 'literary page-turner'.

It can be hard for historical novels to strike the balance between inhabiting the period in which they're written and fully engaging a broad range of modern readers. White Feathers pulls this off with a vibrancy and a lightness of touch that are all the more striking when you realise that this is a debut novel.

This line is so funny. Soccer mom that just gave herself a pelvic injury by doing crescent lunge pose too enthusiastically.

All aboard

A review of Thomas Keneally’s latest novel, The People’s Train. This review has also been published on Politico.ie.

Since the days of Margaret ‘There Is No Alternative’ Thatcher, many (if not most) people have accepted as natural that economic prosperity can only be achieved through a free-market economy that flourishes as speculators make it big on the international markets. Few governments in the West, despite their political allegiances, have made any serious effort to embrace a different system over the last two decades. Even in the midst of the current collapse, official response has been to attempt to return things to the previous status quo, and public response, while angry, remains largely inchoate.

In the current atmosphere, the sheer audacity of what the Russians attempted to achieve from 1917 onwards can look naïve at best, and malevolent at worst, especially with the knowledge of the later atrocities and failures of the Soviet regime. Drummed as we are today with the message of ‘there is no alternative’, it’s hard not to look at the Soviet experiment cynically, yet its core message – that not only is there an alternative, but that it can be achieved – was taken utterly seriously by many men and women whose standards of integrity still stand up today.

Evoking the sincerity of this belief and its potential to change the world is tricky business for any writer looking back through the miasma of 20th-century opinion, but Thomas Keneally, author of Schindler’s Ark, is more than qualified to take on the challenge. In his latest novel, The People’s Train (recently out in paperback), a Russian emigrant to Australia in the early years of the 20th century tells his story of organising strikes and fighting for workers’ rights in Brisbane, before the action moves to Russia and the heady countdown to the October Revolution. The Australian part of the book is presented as a memoir by Keneally’s hero, Artem (Tom) Samsurov, who gradually reveals the details of his journey down under; the perilous escape from a tsarist prison camp, treks across Siberia and journeys by boat through Japan and China. Artem is a committed revolutionary who believes nothing less than a complete overthrow of the capitalist system will be sufficient to bring equality to the world.

Keneally does a wonderful job of bringing this character to life; too often revolutionaries in fiction come across as either hysterical or dully obsessed with political theory, but Artem is portrayed as a thoughtful, self-aware man who nevertheless cannot and will not compromise on his ideals. He is utterly believable as a man of his time and milieu, and the conflicts he faces with his fellow emigrant Russians and with the radical female lawyer he finds himself in a complicated attachment with are entirely believable.

Australia’s labour history is not a well-known topic, but the Brisbane of The People’s Train is full of agitation, strikes, union meetings and corrupt police, and the feel of a country still trying to establish a conclusive identity is powerfully evoked. Indeed, the titular train is an idea for a worker-owned monorail serving Brisbane, conceived by one of Samsurov’s friends. It remains unbuilt, serving as a symbol for the ever-retreating dreams of the young radicals. Australia is represented in the Russia-set section of the book by Paddy Dykes, a young journalist with the Australian Worker, who asks many of the book’s crucial questions about the nature of revolution and what happens when theory meets reality.

The Australian story is more engaging than the Russian; the familiarity of the story of the Russian Revolution leads to a slightly rushed narrative in the second part of the book that isn’t helped by various brief, cameo-like appearances by historical figures. However the pace recovers at the end; the momentous events of history are mirrored by equally turbulent upheavals in the minds of the central characters, with a last line that will take its place among the great endings of fiction.

Keneally leaves the question open as to whether the failure of the Soviet project was due to corruption of the original ideal, or whether the seeds of tyranny lay within it from the beginning. His characters are telling their story as they see it, nothing more. In an age where this period tends to be either glamourised or subject to revisionism, Keneally has succeeded in conveying what it was actually like to live during this unforgettable time.

One of the best historical novels of the year.

The People’s Train by Thomas Keneally

Sceptre, August 2010 (paperback)

£7.99

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Early Bloomsday.

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