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‘So original and disconcerting that it will surely come to be seen as **a paradigm-shifter** ’ *Sunday Telegraph* ‘ **As soon as I opened the book I was gripped. I read it almost non-stop.** 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’ *The Times* ‘A stunning book. It breaks free of what the novel has become nowadays. **I can’t think of anything since *Middlemarch* which so convincingly builds a world** ’ Diana Athill, author of *Somewhere Towards the End* ‘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 **Hilary Mantel is one of our bravest as well as our most brilliant writers** ’ Olivia Laing, *Observer* ‘ **A fascinating read, so good I rationed myself** . 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 **it captures the extrovert, confident, violent mood of the age wonderfully** ’ C.J. Sansom, author of *The Shardlake Series* ‘ **A magnificent achievement** : 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 *The Birth of Venus* ‘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. **It is the making of our English world, and who can fail to be stirred by it?** ’ Helen Dunmore, author of *Birdcage Walk*