If you enjoyed this book by Hilary Mantel then we hope you’ll love the following extract from her Man Booker Prize-winning Wolf Hall, which brings the opulent, brutal world of the Tudors to bloody, glittering life. It is the backdrop to the rise and rise of Thomas Cromwell: lowborn boy, charmer, bully, master of deadly intrigue and, finally, most powerful of Henry VIII’s courtiers.
Wolf Hall is the first in a trilogy of novels set in the time of Henry VIII’s reign. Its sequel, Bring Up the Bodies, won the 2012 Man Booker Prize and is also published by Fourth Estate.