Mantel presented a point of view so persuasive and well-supported that her book is now influencing the way historians as well as countless others evaluate Thomas Cromwell. In this case Mantel writes the kind of historical fiction which uses actual historical people for all its characters, remains faithful to what is historically documented as having happened while the novelist, like the historian, has a duty to realize the living experience and interpret the significance small and large of each event or character. Tudor matter includes all that happened, all that can be connected to people influenced by and influencing a family tree of Tudors, from the time of the ascension of Henry Tudor (1485-1509) to the English throne (also 1485) to the death of his son, Henry VIII’s third child, Anne Boleyn’s daughter, Elizabeth (born 1533, died 1603). We read and discussed carefully Mantel’s two novels as providing us with a fresh angle on the Tudor Matter. I attempt to capture something of the experience I have just had with a group of people at an Oscher Institute of Lifelong Learning (attached to George Mason). Hans Holbein’s (hostile) depiction of Thomas Cromwell
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