Great reading

I have got my timing all wrong: I should have waited until Hilary Mantel's third volume about Thomas Cromwell was available, so that I would not have to wait.  Wolf Hall, and Bring up the bodies have been my bedtime Kindle reading for a wee while now, and I have very much enjoyed being an intimate observer of the man and those around him, and it is with regret that I realise I shall have to wait a while before the next book is published and I can continue the momentum.

Hans Holbein: Thomas Cromwell (Frick Collection, New York) 

Mantel's writing is invisible insofar as she pulls the reader into the world of the person she is writing about without constant asides of information, or scene setting.  So often historical novels are full of the research over which the author has laboured, and too often determined to use nomatter whether strictly necessary.  Mantel is a novelist, telling a story woven round a man who was real.  It is powerful stuff, and I am now not quite sure where I shall go next in my bedtime reading.