IF you think politicians today get a bad press, perhaps you should brush up on your Tudor history. Thomas Cromwell, a commoner who rose to the position of Chief Minister, was one of the architects of the English Reformation, and helped to engineer the annulment of Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon so he could wed his mistress, Anne Boleyn.
Yet his career came to a rather ignoble end in 1540 when he was executed for treason and heresy. If that wasn’t bad enough, he spent the next few centuries being portrayed as a merciless schemer who was prepared to destroy anyone and anything to serve his King.
However, Cromwell has recently been undergoing something of a rehabilitation, most notably in Hilary Mantel’s award-winning novels Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies, which provide a more sympathetic portrait.
Now, Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch is also taking up the cause in the documentary Henry VIII’s Enforcer: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Cromwell.
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