Much of Thomas Cromwell's controversial life is poorly documented, leaving his story wide open to interpretation. In Thomas Cromwell, historian Tracy Borman (Elizabeth's Women) emphasizes his virtues and accomplishments.
The son of a drunken blacksmith, Cromwell spent much of his formative years abroad and was a soldier, merchant, lawyer and a multilingual polymath before he became the protégé of the equally self-made Cardinal Wolsey. Despite his origins, he rose to become the king's all-powerful first minister in 1532, a position he held for eight years. Cromwell more than tripled the king's revenues and was responsible for the executions of 308 people for treason. He set a pace of religious, social and economic change that eventually outstripped the ambitions of his king and made him popularly despised (but also inadvertently paved the way for the eventual revolution). A political genius and reformist, thoroughly pragmatic, hard-working, charming and brutal, he was raised up and then destroyed by Henry VIII, who married his fifth wife on Cromwell's execution day.
Borman credits the novelist Hilary Mantel (Bring Up the Bodies) for inspiring this version of Cromwell's life, though she has clearly done substantial primary research and includes many vivid quotations from a variety of original letters and other sources. Where there are gaps, she bridges them with uncorroborated material, sometimes offering more than one possible version of events, but always maintaining the rapid momentum of her story, every page thick with fatal intrigue. --Sara Catterall