“Bad things snarl up into one ruinous inextricable knot”

You pick up Cromwell’s story in 1536. How much has he changed from the man we met in Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies?

When The Mirror & the Light begins, it seems a crisis is behind Cromwell; Anne Boleyn’s head has fallen. But the court is still in a panic. History tells us that no more of the queen’s ‘lovers’ would be tried and executed – but no one knew that at the time. Possibly even the king could not tell what might emerge from the tangle of bizarre accusations that flew around in the early summer of 1536.

The defeat of the Boleyns clears a path for Cromwell, but the deals he has struck bring their own complications. The months after Anne’s death are crowded, and even Cromwell is surprised by events that – disconcertingly – throw new light on her final days. Anne never ceases to haunt him, but there’s no time to repine when the next crisis is never more than a heartbeat away.

Having already risen so far, what are Cromwell’s ambitions in these years?

Religious reform and – central to the project – the acceptance by the king of an English Bible, and its dissemination. He hopes to secure the future of the Reformation by creating stakeholders in the new order – those families who have received leases of monastic land will not want to return their assets to Rome. Cromwell wants to keep the peace, protect trade and ensure better governance. The difficulty is meeting such objectives in a time of crisis, when France and the Holy Roman Emperor are threatening to invade.