Thomas Cromwell: A Life

Diarmaid MacCulloch

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Allen Lane
03 October 2018

Biography: historical, political & military; History; British & Irish history

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Diarmaid MacCulloch's biography is the most complete life ever written of this elusive figure, making connections not previously seen and revealing the channels through which power in early Tudor England flowed.

Thomas Cromwell is one of the most famous - or notorious - figures in English history. Born in obscurity in Putney, he became a fixer for Cardinal Wolsey in the 1520s. After Wolsey's fall, Henry VIII promoted him to a series of ever greater offices, such that in the 1530s he was effectively running the country for the King. That decade was one of the most momentous in English history: it saw a religious break with the Pope, unprecedented use of parliament, the dissolution of all monasteries, and the coming of the Protestantism. Cromwell was central to all this, but establishing his role with precision has been notoriously difficult.

Diarmaid MacCulloch's biography is the most complete life ever written of this elusive figure, making connections not previously seen and revealing the channels through which power in early Tudor England flowed. It overturns many received interpretations, for example that Cromwell and Anne Boleyn were allies because of their common religious sympathies, showing how he in fact destroyed her. It introduces the many different personalities contributing to these foundational years, all worrying about the 'terrifyingly unpredictable' Henry VIII, and allows readers to feel that all this is going on around them. For a time, the self-made 'ruffian', as he described himself - ruthless, adept in the exercise of power, quietly determined in religious revolution - was master of events.

By: Diarmaid MacCulloch
Imprint: Allen Lane
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 240mm, Width: 162mm, Spine: 49mm
Weight: 1.302kg
ISBN: 9781846144295
ISBN 10: 1846144299
Pages: 784
Publication Date: 03 October 2018
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Diarmaid MacCulloch is Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford University. His Thomas Cranmer (1996) won the Whitbread Biography Prize, the James Tait Black Prize and the Duff Cooper Prize; Reformation: Europe's House Divided 1490-1700 (2004) won the Wolfson Prize and the British Academy Prize. A History of Christianity (2010), which was adapted into a six-part BBC television series, was awarded the Cundill and Hessel-Tiltman Prizes. His Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh were published in 2013 as Silence: A Christian History. His most recent television series (2015) was Sex and the Church. He was knighted in 2012.

Reviews for Thomas Cromwell: A Life

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