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Dis-Manteling More, Peter Iver Kaufman

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, winner of the prestigious 2009 Booker-Man award for fiction, re-presents the 1520s and early 1530s from Thomas Cromwell's perspective. Mantel mistakenly underscores Cromwell's confessional neutrality and imagines his kindness as well as Thomas More's alleged cruelty. The book recycles old and threadbare accusations that More himself answered. "Dis-Manteling" collects evidence for the accuracy of More's answers and supplies alternative explanations for events and for More's attitudes that Mantel packs into her accusations. Wolf Hall is admirably readable, although prejudicial. Perhaps it is fair for fiction to distort so ascertainably, yet I should think that historians will …