Authors Electric

Being the world’s slowest reader, I finally got to grips with Wolf Hall because of the television version, and because having already read Beyond Black I knew the lady is a writer of genius. It’s a measure of how wonderful I find it that after only ten days I‘m on page 313, which is nearly half way through. I thought the TV version was fantastic, too. Almost every scene, up to and including the execution, was mind-blowing. (I didn’t bother with a spoiler alert there, because if anyone doesn’t know who got the chop it might make them read the book. Sorry. I’m being silly.) Sitting in me lonely writer’s bed this morning, though – reluctant to give up and get up halfway through a chapter – I fell to wondering what was the motor for this exhaustive, off-centre, and truly rather frightening revivification of English history. Coupled with an interview or two I’d heard earlier (thank you, World Service), I realized it might be an investigation of what the West is going to ‘do’ about t...

There’s a pivotal scene in Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall in which Cromwell, faced with yet another of King Henry’s frankly ludicrous demands, murmurs, ‘It will not be easy.’ To which the King replies, ‘Master Cromwell, this is not Mission Difficult. This is not even Mission Impossible. This is Mission Find Henry More Rumpy Pumpy and Fewer Interfering Popes and Reboot Religion As We Noe It. Mission Difficult should be a walk in the park for you.’ Actually I paraphrase (don’t have the book to hand) but it’s words to that effect. In fact Henry says (because actually I have a good verbal memory), ‘Do I retain you for what is easy? I retain you, Master Cromwell, because you are as cunning as a bag of serpents.’ Which I think you’ll agree is an even better line. Oddly the TV adaptation condensed ‘You are as cunning as a bag of serpents’ into ‘You are a serpent,’ probably because ‘You are as cunning as a bag of serpents’ sounds too much like something Blackadder would say (‘Master Cromwell,...

Montacute House aka Wolf Hall  The media love to feed off each other. Over the winter the Daily Telegraph ran a news item every Monday (yes news, not features!) relating to Downton Abbey,  and in the last few weeks I've notices something similar with the BBC's Wolf Hall , except for a small snag: viewing figures weren’t as brilliant as expected.  Still, even that became news of the non-news kind ( Wolf Hall fails to grip the nation ) and they hedged their bets by finding a photo of Mark Rylance for the front page. The Beeb of course cashes in with spin-off programmes and Rylance (surprise!) popped up right on cue on Desert Island Discs . Do I mind?  Not in the least, because fickle creature that I am, I’d rather watch or listen to Mark Rylance than the sadly overexposed High Bonneville any day. Oh what a circus. The media have me down to a T. But it’s still worth thinking about Wolf Hall on TV and its impact or lack of. For me the books do require pa...