<p>‘So original and disconcerting that it will surely come to be seen as <strong>a paradigm-shifter</strong>’ <em>Sunday Telegraph</em></p> <p>‘<strong>As soon as I opened the book I was gripped. I read it almost non-stop.</strong> When I did have to put it down, I was full of regret that the story was over, a regret I still feel. This is a wonderful and intelligently imagined retelling of a familiar tale from an unfamiliar angle’ <em>The Times</em></p> <p>‘A stunning book. It breaks free of what the novel has become nowadays. <strong>I can’t think of anything since <em>Middlemarch</em> which so convincingly builds a world</strong>’ Diana Athill, author of <em>Somewhere Towards the End</em></p> <p>‘This is a beautiful and profoundly human book, a dark mirror held up to our own world. And the fact that its conclusion takes place after the curtain has fallen only proves that <strong>Hilary Mantel is one of our bravest as well as our most brilliant writers</strong>’ Olivia Laing, <em>Observer</em></p> <p>‘<strong>A fascinating read, so good I rationed myself</strong>. It is remarkable and very learned; the texture is marvellously rich, the feel of Tudor London and the growing household of a man on the rise marvellously authentic. Characters real and imagined spring to life, from the childish and petulant King to Thomas Wolsey's jester, and <strong>it captures the extrovert, confident, violent mood of the age wonderfully</strong>’ C.J. Sansom, author of <em>The Shardlake Series</em></p> <p>‘<strong>A magnificent achievement</strong>: the scale of its vision and the fine stitching of its detail; the teeming canvas of characters; the style with its clipped but powerful immediacy; the wit, the poetry and the nuance’ Sarah Dunant, author of <em>The Birth of Venus</em></p> <p>‘A superb novel, beautifully constructed, and an absolutely compelling read. A novel of Tudor times which persuades us that we are there, at that moment, hungry to know what happens next. <strong>It is the making of our English world, and who can fail to be stirred by it?</strong>’ Helen Dunmore, author of <em>Birdcage Walk</em></p>