Part 1 ("Across the Narrow Sea" | "Paternity" | "At Austin Friars") Playback | Notes Part 2 ("Visitation" | "An Occult History of Britain" | "Make or Mar") Playback | Notes Part 3 ("Three-Card Trick" | "Entirely Beloved Cromwell" | The Dead Complain of Their Burial") Playback | Notes Part 4 ("Arrange Your Face" | "Alas, What Shall I… Continue reading Wolf Hall: Notes and Recordings
A friend sent me a recent(ish) article from the Times Literary Supplement titled, "In defence of Thomas More." My quick answer is: that guy doesn't need a defense. But I put a little more work into it, and that's what follows. It's long, by the way, for those who like a warning.
(I literally do not understand why anyone would want to be a monarch, by the way. Everyone wants you to die. Everything about your existence is rounded by prescription and proscription. Let me be a peasant who dies at 35 if I have to be time-traveled to the 16th century.)
"Supremacy" ...and Charles Brandon is in the fens shouting at a door: For one thing, this just makes me laugh. But as a reminder, the door Brandon is shouting at is Katherine's. She refuses to be moved from Buckden. "She will go nowhere, she says, unless he is prepared to break down the door and bind… Continue reading Mike’s Marginalia for Part VI
A look at Henry's attempt to get rabbis to sign off on his annulment, the Torah passages used, and if it worked. (It didn't.)
Anna Regina Helen Barre: She actually existed, and her story has the pacing of a Victorian sensation novel. But I have to wait until Part 6 to tell it so I don't give anything away too early. ‘I never liked his haughty manners, you know, and his processions every day, the state he kept. And… Continue reading Mike’s Marginalia for Part V
Anne is ::finally:: crowned, so everything is going to go perfectly from here out. We wonder what kind of moral animal Cromwell is. And it's hard out there for a Holy Maid.
she [Mary] hints, in Castilian, that it is her women's disorder From about the age of 15 on, Mary Tudor (Katherine's daughter with Henry; later to be Bloody Mary or Mary I) suffered from irregular periods (and there are a LOT of factors that could have encouraged this, like stress, for example). She eventually dies… Continue reading Mike’s Marginalia for Part IV
Joan Boughton breaks our heart. We see under Cromwell's mask a little. Henry Percy is a punk-ass. And what do we expect from a person born entirely into the most privileged family and place?
As I've mentioned, my original copy of Wolf Hall, given to me by Zach who little understood what he had created in doing so, is filled with scribbles, underlines, footnotes, and margin notes. Here are some that I think you'll find useful. Three-Card Trick: That's the opening chapter of Part 3. Cromwell learned the three-card… Continue reading Mike’s Marginalia for Part III
