Hilary Mantel · 2009 · exile

Booker Prize 2009. A blacksmith's son from Putney is beaten half to death by his father at fifteen, runs to Europe, comes back a soldier, banker, lawyer and linguist - and by 1535 is the second most powerful man in England. Mantel's argument is that Cromwell got there by having seen more of the world than anybody at court.

1. 1
   Putney

   1500, and a boy of fifteen is on the cobbles bleeding, having been kicked half to death by his blacksmith father - and gets up, and goes, because Putney Heath is at his back and anywhere is better than here.

2. 2
   The Garigliano

   He turns up in Italy as a boy soldier in the French army and is on the losing side at the Garigliano in 1503 - and Mantel has him decide, lying among the dead, that he is not going to do this for a living.

3. 3
   Florence

   The Frescobaldi bank, where he learns money, Italian and the habit of watching people - the education that will later let a man of no birth negotiate with cardinals and out-argue lawyers who have been to university.

4. 4
   Antwerp

   The English cloth trade in the Low Countries, and the languages: Flemish, French, Spanish and enough Greek to be dangerous - and a wife, and a household, and a way back into England as a man worth hiring.

5. 5
   Austin Friars

   His own house on the edge of the City, filling with clerks, wards, tapestries and boys off the street - and the plague takes his wife and both daughters in a summer, which Mantel gives one short chapter and never lets him forget.

6. 6
   Greenwich

   Wolsey falls and Cromwell does not fall with him, which nobody expects - and the King's court, where the fate of peoples is made by two men in small rooms rather than by coronations and processions.

7. 7
   Wolf Hall

   The Seymour seat in Wiltshire, which the King's progress is heading for as the book closes - and Mantel ends on the arrangements for the visit, because everybody who has read any history knows what is at Wolf Hall.