"Those who are made can be unmade"
Review of Hilary Mantel's "Bring Up the Bodies" (2012)
If Wolf Hall was about the art of survival, Bring Up the Bodies (2012) is about the art of destruction.
Switching from the panoramic sweep of Wolf Hall, Mantel tightens her lens to a single year, 1535-36, when Anne Boleyn's fall from grace became a masterclass in political assassination.
The novel takes its title from the juridical phrase that brought prisoners to trial, but it might as well describe how Mantel resurrects the dead.
"There are no endings. If you think so you are deceived as to their nature. They are all beginnings."
She won an unprecedented second consecutive Booker Prize for this book, and you'll understand why by page ten.
Where Wolf Hall gave you the thrill of an outsider clawing his way up, Bring Up the Bodies shows you the cost of being at the top.
The Queen is Dead. Long Live the King’s Favour.
The novel picks up where Wolf Hall left off: Anne Boleyn is queen, Henry VIII has his long-awaited heir in the oven (or so he hopes), and Thomas Cromwell is at the height of his power.
“Edward Seymour says, ‘You should have been a bishop, Cromwell.’
‘Edward,’ he says, ‘I should have been Pope.”
But Henry, ever fickle, is tiring of Anne. Her sharp tongue, her failure to produce a son, her enemies at court—everything that once enthralled him now repels him. He has his eye on Jane Seymour.
“To his inner ear, the cardinal speaks. He says, I saw you, Crumb, when you were at Elvetham: scratching your balls in the dawn and wondering at the violence of the king’s whims. If he wants a new wife, fix him one. I didn’t, and I am dead.”
And so, Cromwell does what he does best: he watches, he waits, and then he moves, all while keeping his hands clean.
“The cardinal used to say, Cromwell will do in a week what will take another man a year. It is not worth your while to block him or oppose him. If you reach out to grip him he will not be there, he will have ridden twenty miles while you are pulling your boots on.”
The fall of Anne Boleyn is not inevitable—it is engineered.
“Rafe asks him, could the king's freedom be obtained, sir, with more economy of means? Less bloodshed?
Look, he says: once you have exhausted the process of negotiation and compromise, once you have fixed on the destruction of an enemy, that destruction must be swift and it must be perfect. Before you even glance in his direction, you should have his name on a warrant, the ports blocked, his wife and friends bought, his heir under your protection, his money in your strong room and his dog running to your whistle. Before he wakes in the morning, you should have the axe in your hand.”
Mantel makes you feel the weight of every whisper, every carefully placed word, every pawn moved into position. This isn’t a historical retelling; it’s a slow-motion car crash, and you can’t look away.
“He needs guilty men. So he has found men who are guilty. Though perhaps not guilty as charged.”
Where Mantel shines
Drawing from historical records and her own razor-sharp imagination, Mantel creates scenes of almost unbearable tension.
“I listened to the murmurs within his silence. Construction can be put on silence.”
Court depositions become psychological warfare.
“You will see that it is not in your interests to protect the gentlemen who share your sin. Because if the position were reversed, believe me, they would not spare a thought for you.”
Dinner conversations carry the weight of executions.
“'Do you know you can learn from pain?’
But, he explains, the circumstances must be right. To learn, you must have a future.”
Mantel also makes Henry VIII a looming, terrifying presence. He’s not the bumbling, gluttonous king of caricature—he’s a man who believes in his own divine right, a man who changes his mind and expects the world to rearrange itself accordingly.
“Henry had sat up: ‘I can do as it pleases me,’ his monarch said. ‘God would not allow my pleasure to be contrary to his design, nor my designs to be impeded by his will.’ A shadow of cunning had crossed his face. ‘And Gardiner himself said so.’”
Cromwell understands this better than anyone:
"You can be merry with the king, you can share a joke with him. But as Thomas More used to say, it's like sporting with a tamed lion. You tousle its mane and pull its ears, but all the time you're thinking, those claws, those claws, those claws."
So he must do everything he can to be in the King's favour:
“How many men can say, as I must, 'I am a man whose only friend is the King of England'? I have everything, you would think. And yet take Henry away, and I have nothing.”
What might disappoint you
The biggest issue? You know how this ends. Anne Boleyn’s execution is one of the most famous moments in English history, and Mantel doesn’t radically reinterpret it.
That means the tension isn’t what will happen, but how it will unfold. For some, that may not be enough.
And then there’s Cromwell himself. He’s still brilliant, still fascinating, but in Wolf Hall, he was an underdog. Here, he’s the predator.
He justifies what he does, but you can’t ignore the ruthlessness. You may admire him, but it’s harder to like him.
“He has noticed this: that men who have not met him dislike him, but when they have met him, only some of them do.”
The Verdict: A Chilling, Masterful Political Thriller
Bring Up the Bodies is leaner, meaner, and deadlier than its predecessor.
What makes the book feel urgently relevant is its exploration of how truth becomes malleable in the hands of power.
“What is the nature of the border between truth and lies? It is permeable and blurred because it is planted thick with rumour, confabulation, misunderstandings and twisted tales. Truth can break the gates down, truth can howl in the street; unless truth is pleasing, personable and easy to like, she is condemned to stay whimpering at the back door.”
The novel has been adapted for stage and screen, most notably as part of the BBC series starring Mark Rylance. Critics have praised its portrayal of power politics as worthy of comparison to "The Godfather."
Law schools have used it to discuss the nature of evidence and testimony.
“It is not so much who is guilty, as whose guilt is of service to you. . . we are not priests. We don't want their sort of confession. We are lawyers. We want the truth little by little and only those parts of it we can use.”
The book's portrayal of Anne Boleyn has sparked feminist reappraisals of her role in history.
As Cromwell would appreciate, it's a book that rewards close attention and repays multiple readings.
Read Next:
The only logical step is The Mirror and the Light, Mantel’s final instalment, where Cromwell learns what happens when the king’s favour runs out.
If you're fascinated by Tudor power politics, try Robert Harris's Conclave for another masterful political thriller in a confined setting.
If you want a non-fiction deep dive, Eric Ives’s The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn is the definitive take on her downfall.
And for another novel that turns political intrigue into gripping drama, Robert Harris’s Imperium does for ancient Rome what Mantel does for Tudor England.