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''Wolf Hall'' (2009) is a historical novel by English author Hilary Mantel, published by Fourth Estate, named after the Seymour family seat of Wolfhall or Wulfhall in Wiltshire. Set in the period from 1500 to 1535, ''Wolf Hall'' is a highly fictionalised biography documenting the rapid rise to power of Thomas Cromwell in the court of Henry VIII through to the death of Sir Thomas More. The novel won both the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2012, ''The Observer'' named it as one of "The 10 best historical novels". The book is the first in a trilogy; the sequel ''Bring Up the Bodies'' was published in 2012. ==Historical background== Born to a working-class family of no position or name, Cromwell rose to become the right-hand man of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, adviser to the King. He survived Wolsey's fall from grace to eventually take his place as the most powerful of Henry's ministers. In that role, he oversaw Henry assert his authority to declare his marriage annulled from Catherine of Aragon and marriage to Anne Boleyn, the English church's break with Rome and the dissolution of the monasteries. Historical and literary accounts have not been kind to Cromwell; in Robert Bolt's play ''A Man for All Seasons'' he is portrayed as the calculating, unprincipled opposite of Thomas More's honour and rectitude. Mantel's novel offers an alternative to that characterization, a more intimate portrait of Cromwell as a pragmatic and talented man attempting to serve king and country amid the political machinations of Henry's court and the religious upheavals of the Protestant Reformation. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Wolf Hall」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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