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A review by schnauzermum
Thomas Cromwell: A Life by Diarmaid MacCulloch
4.0
The great Tudor historian Sir Geoffrey Elton thought that Thomas Cromwell was unbiographable. Very few documents written by Cromwell survive and MacCulloch speculates that his household/supporters destroyed his ‘out tray’ on his arrest. What we have is the ‘in tray’. This provides fertile ground for a novelist, but makes the task of a biographer much harder.
What we have here is a detailed account of the politics and administration of England in the late 1520s/1530s. As always, MacCulloch made me think afresh about subjects I thought I knew a lot about, such as the Dissolution of the Monasteries. I would have liked to know more about why Cromwell pursued the religious policies that he did, but the lack of documents means we can’t know. Neither do we have any almost contemporaneous accounts, as we do with Cavendish’s life of Cardinal Wolsey.
I would recommend this book, but probably more for a specialist/academic audience than for the general reader.
What we have here is a detailed account of the politics and administration of England in the late 1520s/1530s. As always, MacCulloch made me think afresh about subjects I thought I knew a lot about, such as the Dissolution of the Monasteries. I would have liked to know more about why Cromwell pursued the religious policies that he did, but the lack of documents means we can’t know. Neither do we have any almost contemporaneous accounts, as we do with Cavendish’s life of Cardinal Wolsey.
I would recommend this book, but probably more for a specialist/academic audience than for the general reader.