Hilary Mantel · 2020 · exile

The last book, nine hundred pages, and the four years between Anne Boleyn's execution and Cromwell's own. A rebellion in the north, a fourth marriage arranged by portrait, and a man who has made himself indispensable discovering that indispensable is not the same as safe.

1. 1
   The Tower

   May 1536, and Cromwell walks away from the scaffold to breakfast - Mantel opening the third book on the same morning the second closed, from the other side of the axe.

2. 2
   Lincoln

   October 1536, and the Lincolnshire Rising - commons in arms against the dissolution of the monasteries, naming Cromwell personally as the man they want handed over, which the King notes.

3. 3
   Doncaster

   The Pilgrimage of Grace, thirty thousand men under Robert Aske, and a promise of pardon made in the King's name and not kept - and the hangings afterwards, which are Cromwell's work and are held against him.

4. 4
   Rochester

   January 1540, and Henry rides down to surprise his new bride and is not recognised - Anne of Cleves having no idea who the fat stranger bursting into her chamber is, which is the beginning of Cromwell's end.

5. 5
   Calais

   The English pale across the water, the garrison, the trade and the endless small intrigues - Cromwell's own network at its widest, and about to be worth nothing at all to him.

6. 6
   The Tower

   July 1540, and he is arrested at the council table, attainted without trial, and beheaded on Tower Hill by a man who makes a poor job of it - four years to the month after he watched a queen die on the same ground.