Thomas Cromwell is hot property at the moment and is just everywhere - I wonder why... Anyway, I thought I'd draw your attention to some articles about him and also some recommended reading on him.
- Wolf Hall and Cardinal Wolsey going down to Hell - What's the truth behind Wolf Hall's masque scene and Cromwell's vow of vengeance? Claire examines this on The Anne Boleyn Files.
- Derek Wilson - Historian and author Derek Wilson has started writing a series of posts on "The Real Thomas Cromwell" over on his blog derekalanwilson.blogspot.co.uk/. See The Real Thomas Cromwell: Avoiding Confusion for the first one, The Real Thomas Cromwell 2: Cromwell and his Dad for the second one and The Real Thomas Cromwell 3: A Genius in the Making for the third.
- Nerdalicious - Olga Hughes has written an excellent article on what the primary sources tell is about Walter Cromwell, see The Blacksmith, The Brewer or the Shearman: Who Was Thomas Cromwell’s Father?
- Beth von Staats has written The Softer Side of Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex and also Fear and Loathing in Tudor England, Part IV -Thomas Cromwell’s Austin Friars.
- Thomas Cromwell was the Islamic State of his day - In an article for The Telegraph, Dominic Selwood shares his view of the "ruffian" Thomas Cromwell.
- Peter Kosminsky on Wolf Hall: ‘I'm with Cromwell. He'’s an underdog’ - The director of BBC2's Wolf Hall discusses Cromwell.
- Admiring Thomas Cromwell is a respectable way of expressing anti-Catholic feeling by Father Alexander Lucie-Smith in The Catholic Herald.
- The Rise & Fall of Thomas Cromwell: Henry VIII's Most Faithful Servant by John Schofield is my favourite Thomas Cromwell biography. I just need Diarmaid MacCulloch to hurry up with his now!
Do let me know if you've seen an interesting article on Thomas Cromwell and then I can add it to the list. Think you know all there is to know about Thomas Cromwell? Members can test their knowledge with our Thomas Cromwell Quiz.
Cromwell turned ruthlessness into an art form, yet, to me, is still strangely sympathetic. Viva Cromwell!
Well, Wolf Hall definitely rattled Dominic Selwoods cage. We all know that most of the program is fictionalise, but if it makes the younger generation take note of history, then that can only be good
As Diarmaid McCulloch points out, the fact that hinders our attempts to understand TC is that ‘we don’t do God but the Tudors did God all the time’. Cromwell was religious. To grasp what that meant we have to go deeper than popular fiction treatments. In my current blog series (see above) I’m trying to tease out what he did believe.