Hilary Mantel is brilliant. I've always had a vague idea of what happened during the time of Henry VIII, (summed up by the nasty little poem: divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived) and hadn't given it much thought beyond that. This book sucked me in from the first page and has left me hankering for the sequel, but I found myself rationing it out like a daily treat for my morning commute over the last 6 weeks, savouring each little chunk, rolling the words around my head every day. I can't fault the language. She writes so well, I am envious! Like War and Peace, this story is a glorious soap opera and is deserving of time to process the action and the players and the events as they happen. I feel educated, but not painfully so. Thomas Cromwell is an interesting character, bizarrely modern, almost anachronistically so. I like him. Unfortunately I don't expect things will end well for him. Time to go Bring up the Bodies!?