Tuesday, 21 July 2015

07:55 TH White, The Once and Future King, Tracy Borman, Thomas Cromwell: The untold story of Henry VIII's most faithful servant

'The Once & Future King' was a real slog, and not the book I was expecting at all. The remaining books were very different in tone to 'The Sword in The Stone', and were more musings on power politics ; in the last section, written in the dark days of the late 1930s, the character Mordred is recognisably influenced by contemporary events, parading round like a fascist with his followers in blackshirts.  I rather preferred the light-hearted jocular nature of the first book.
It took a long time to read, in part because my main reading time seems to be on the exercise bike at work, and when the weather is good I'm outside running. With Borman's Cromwell, I was more engaged and read a few chapters whenever I could. It comes closely after the TV adaptation of the wonderful Wolf Hall, and it would appear that Mark Rylance has finally replaced Kenneth Williams as Cromwell in my mind.  Neither of them physically approximate Cromwell, if Holbein's portrait is anything to go by; such a shame James Gandolfini isn’t around anymore - physically he would have been spot on for the role.

Libby has had a couple of settling-in sessions at school in recent weeks, and cannot wait for September. When we dropped Freddie of yesterday, she didn’t want to leave for nursery; she was clinging to the railings and screaming to be let into Mice. . . 

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