Thomas Cromwell

As stylishly written as it is scholarly * Guardian * This biography is a major work of scholarship of the type that will reset academic understanding of the Tudor politics for a generation. ... Part of MacCulloch's skill is to introduce even the general reader to the thrill of a historian's process ... and, golly, can MacCulloch make a Tudor paper-trail seem exciting. -- Kate Maltby * Financial Times * Triumphant and definitive ... a masterpiece of documentary detective-work, which buzzes with the excitement of a great historian immersed archives, interrogating not only the thousands of papers Cromwell left behind, but also the gaps left by a (presumed) shredding of evidence as Cromwell's partisans sought to save him from the king's wrath -- Dan Jones * Sunday Times * MacCulloch sets out to understand exactly the job that a 16th-century Cromwell did. And he succeeds, in a biography that balances a wealth of particular detail with a consistent grasp on the larger story, and holds the attention for the whole of its formidable length ... MacCulloch's brilliant book, a model of classical historical biography at its finest, gives us plenty of material for thinking about how to diagnose (and protect ourselves against) absolutisms that depend on denying human dignity and legal right to strangers and questioners -- Rowan Williams * New Statesman * Diarmaid MacCulloch's hugely impressive new biography, meticulous and magisterial, thus meets a reading public with arms open to receive it. ... If this is not the definitive biography, I don't know what that would look like. -- Peter Marshall * Literary Review * Thomas Cromwell has famously defied his biographers, but no more. Diarmaid MacCulloch's book is subtle, witty and precisely constructed. He has sifted the vast archive to clear away the accumulated error, muddle and propaganda of centuries, allowing us to see this clever and fascinating man better than ever before, and in the mirror of his times. This is the biography we have been awaiting for 400 years -- Hilary Mantel