It's a dangerous job. "You can be merry with the king, you can share a joke with him," he thinks. "But as Thomas More used to say, it's like sporting with a tamed lion. You tousle its mane and pull its ears, but all the time you're thinking, those claws, those claws, those claws."
As she did in A Place of Greater Safety, Mantel humanizes history, tracing the daily decisions that turn bureaucrats into villains or heroes. In Greater Safety her focus was on the young lawyers — Desmoulins, Danton, Robespierre — who would launch the French Revolution (and be destroyed by the Terror). Here, the revolution is a little more subtle: in order for a kingdom to be maintained, the world as it's known will be destroyed and remade, as much in Cromwell's image as the king's.
Related:
2009: The year in books, Thirty-three reasons you can't miss this year's Boston Books Festival, Fall Books Preview: Getting booked, More 
- 2009: The year in books
Here, listed alphabetically by author, are 10 of the best books the Phoenix reviewed in 2009.
- Thirty-three reasons you can't miss this year's Boston Books Festival
The Boston Book Festival happens this Saturday, October 16, from 10 am to 9 pm at various locations in Copley Square.
- Fall Books Preview: Getting booked
Two Sedarises, two New Yorker favorites, and a famous neurologist are among the highlights of this fall’s book events.
- Love's lexicographer
As the editorial director at Scholastic, David Levithan is surrounded by emotional stories about adolescents. Being overexposed to such hyperbolic feelings about feelings could easily turn a writer off pursuing such ventures himself — despite the secrets he may have picked up along the way.
- Téa Obreht 'remembers' the old country
For Obreht to set her first novel in a country she hasn’t lived in since the age of 12 shows considerable ambition.
- Vowell's America
How Hawaii became "American"
- Chris Adrian's tragic enchantments
Chris Adrian's novels puff you full of delight, then rip your heart out. Adrian's a sadist, maybe. Or maybe he's got the biggest heart of any living writer, so big that it can hold the sweetest thoughts alongside shame and also death — real death, in all its devastation and splendor.
- The Game of Thrones author visits his realm
The immense appeal of George R. R. Martin's storytelling relies, in part, on the innate thrill of the mechanics of power.
- Ann Patchett finds her readers
Ann Patchett forever endeared herself to Bostonians with her 2007 novel, Run, a lyrical take on the Kennedys and crisp New England winters.
- Daniel Orozco gets to work
"Temporary Stories," the eighth entry in Daniel Orozco's debut collection, Orientation (Faber and Faber), is a gem and a killer.
- Rob Bell freaks out evangelicals
Saved by the bell
- Less
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, Books, features, Hilary Mantel, More
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