Free Read The Mirror & the Light by Hilary Mantel (Goodreads Author) - AGF

?If you cannot speak truth at a beheading when can you speak it??England May 1536. Anne Boleyn is dead decapitated in the space of a heartbeat by a hired French executioner. As her remains are bundled into oblivion Thomas Cromwell breakfasts with the victors. The blacksmiths son from Putney emerges from the springs bloodbath to continue his climb to power and wealth?If you cannot speak truth at a beheading when can you speak it??England May 1536. Anne Boleyn is dead decapitated in the space of a heartbeat by a hired French executioner. As her remains are bundled into oblivion Thomas Cromwell breakfasts with the victors. The blacksmiths son from Putney emerges from the springs bloodbath to continue his climb to power and wealth while his formidable master Henry VIII settles to short-lived happiness with his third queen before Jane dies giving birth to the male heir he most craves.Cromwell is a man with only his wits to rely on; he has no great family to back him no private army. Despite rebellion at home traitors plotting abroad and the threat of invasion testing Henrys regime to the breaking point Cromwells robust imagination sees a new country in the mirror of the future. But can a nation or a person shed the past like a skin? Do the dead continually unbury themselves? What will you do the Spanish ambassador asks Cromwell when the king turns on you as sooner or later he turns on everyone close to him?With The Mirror & the Light Hilary Mantel brings to a triumphant close the trilogy she began with Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. She traces the final years of Thomas Cromwell the boy from nowhere who climbs to the heights of power offering a defining portrait of predator and prey of a ferocious contest between present and past between royal will and a common mans vision: of a modern nation making itself through conflict passion and courage.(less)

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