The Steve Tiberius Donoghue Book Club: Wolf Hall - Parts 1& 2!

Earlier this year, Steve Donoghue did Wolf Hall for his book club.  I missed it at the time, but since I'm now currently reading Wolf Hall, I thought I'd go back and watch these videos as well.  

I've just finished parts 1 and 2, (p.1-130), so I thought I'd watch Steve's commentary, and make a few brief comments:

--Steve mentions a preparatory video he also did for Wolf Hall.  I'd be embarrassed to admit to you how much time I spent looking for this preparatory video in Steve's video archive, but I can't find it.  So I'll just start with this video.

--Steve says that you don't need to have any historical background to enjoy this novel.  Personally, however, I feel that I would have been quite lost during sections of this book if I hadn't already known something about the history already.  Particularly with the jumps back and forth in time, I thought it was useful to have some historical framework on which to position this story.  (My information comes from This Sceptred Isle, Monarchy by David Starkey, and The Tudors TV show.  Not exactly in-depth scholarly stuff, but enough to give me a framework of the major events of this period.)

--Steve says that Hilary Mantel has made the decision to give a personal portrayal of Cromwell in the first two sections rather than a political one.  He says that's a wise decision, but I personally would have been more interested in the politics.  But it sounds like the second half of the book will be more political.

--Steve's enthusiasm for this book is really infectious.  It makes me glad that I'm reading it, although I'm not quite as enamored with the prose style as he is.  Still, it's interesting to see it through his eyes.

--Speaking of which, the part of the book that Steve reads from 8:58 was a passage I had trouble digesting when I first read it myself.  I'm glad Steve reads it here, because hearing it spoken aloud helps me to digest it a bit more than when I was reading it.  And furthermore, Steve explains exactly what is going on, so that by the time he is done with that passage, I understand it completely.  But it was something I struggled with when reading it by myself.

--Add me to the list of people who find the "he" business irritating and confusing.  (Apparently this is the common reaction of everyone reading it for the first time.)  But Steve promises that I'll get used to it as the book goes on, so hopefully he's right.

--Steve makes the observation about how there are Thomases everywhere in this book.

Indeed, I had made the same observation myself when reviewing The Tudors TV show.  To quote myself from 2013:

Also Thomas More, Thomas Wolsey, Thomas Cromwell, and Thomas Cranmer all appear pretty much as David Starkey describes them. 

(....Hmmm, looking back at that list, I notice Thomas appears to have been a very popular name back in Tudor England. And I haven't even mentioned all the other Thomases in The Tudors: Thomas Boleyn, Thomas Wriothesley, Thomas Howard, Thomas Seymour, Thomas Culpeper, Thomas Darcy...)

Everyone in Tudor England was named Thomas, it seems!  

Does anyone know why this was?  I mean, in mainstream Christian tradition, old Doubting Thomas was not usually portrayed as the best disciple, right?  (I know there's a separate Gnostic tradition, but the Gnostic tradition didn't have any influence in Tudor England, right?)

--This is a nitpick, but...

Steve at one point compares this book to I, Claudius, and says that Robert Graves did the same thing for Livia that Hilary Mantel does for Cromwell: sees a through line where one does not necessarily historically exist, and creates a decades long historical campaign.  

One thing I picked up from Mike Duncan's History of Rome Podcast, however, is that the "Livia killed everyone" conspiracy theory actually predates Robert Graves, and started with the ancient historians.  (I, to my shame, have yet to read Suetonius myself, so I'll have to take Mike Duncan's word for it.)

Also, is Steve implying that the rest of this book is going to be about  Thomas Cromwell taking revenge on the people who took down Cardinal Wolseley?  I guess that could be interesting.

--Steve says "Wolf Hall has been the unpaid debt of book readers for forever."  I suppose that would include me as well.  It's been 10 years since this book was first recommended to me.

Also, I didn't realize until Steve mentioned it that Christopher Hitchens had also been a big fan of this book.  (I googled it now, and found Hitchens' review in the Atlantic, but it's hidden behind the paywall.)

--Who are the two crucial characters that Steve says are barely mentioned at all in all 3 books?  The only 2 I can think of would be Henry VIII's two daughters (Elizabeth and Mary)?  I guess we'll see.

--One more nitpick: the part when the Duke of Norfolk asks Cromwell "Why are you such a person?" occurs not in parts 1 and 2, but at the beginning of part 3.