The Mirror and the Light
By Hilary Mantel

Theand Sunday Timesand bestselling sequel toand Wolf Halland andand Bring Up the Bodies, the stunning conclusion to Hilary Mantel's Man Booker Prize-winning Wolf Hall trilogy.Aand Guardianand Book of the Year • Aand Timesand Book of the Year • Aand Daily Telegraphand Book of the Year • Aand Sunday Timesand Book of the Year • Aand New Statesmanand Book of the Year • Aand Spectatorand Book of the YearShortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2020Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2020 Mantel has taken us to the dark heart of history…and what a show'and The Times If you cannot speak truth at a beheading, when can you speak it?'England, May 1536. Anne Boleyn is dead, decapitated in the space of a heartbeat by a hired French executioner. As her remains are bundled into oblivion, Thomas Cromwell breakfasts with the victors. The blacksmith's son from Putney emerges from the spring's bloodbath to continue his climb to power and wealth, while his formidable master, Henry VIII, settles to short-lived happiness with his third queen, Jane Seymour.Cromwell is a man with only his wits to rely on; he has no great family to back him, no private army. Despite rebellion at home, traitors plotting abroad and the threat of invasion testing Henry's regime to breaking point, Cromwell's robust imagination sees a new country in the mirror of the future. But can a nation, or a person, shed the past like a skin? Do the dead continually unbury themselves? What will you do, the Spanish ambassador asks Cromwell, when the king turns on you, as sooner or later he turns on everyone close to him?Withand The Mirror and the Light, Hilary Mantel brings to a triumphant close the trilogy she began withand Wolf Halland andand Bring Up the Bodies. She traces the final years of Thomas Cromwell, the boy from nowhere who climbs to the heights of power, offering a defining portrait of predator and prey, of a ferocious contest between present and past, between royal will and a common man's vision: of a modern nation making itself through conflict, passion and courage.Sunday Timesand Bestseller (08/03/2020)