While listening intently to Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall this week, a passage from the chapter Alas, What Shall I Do For Love? stood out in a way that I have not read or heard before. Thomas Cromwell is showing young Thomas Avery a book he has been sent - Brother Luca Pacioli’s
I'm glad you brought this up. When I was listening to that Hans Holbein passage the other night, it occurred to me that it was a different book to the one they had recently discovered. Mantel does say Holbein rejects Cromwell's bible because it is too tattered and thumbed. A hint to his religiosity, so important to the book.
I feel I would like the book to really be the book that tells you how to keep your accounts. But I am also pleased that we now know what it actually is. It’s the split between Hilary’s Cromwell and the “real” Cromwell brought into sharp focus, rather than the seeping and bleeding of the stories and the remembrances.
I love how you are so immersed in the world created so magnificently by Hilary Mantel.
I'm glad you brought this up. When I was listening to that Hans Holbein passage the other night, it occurred to me that it was a different book to the one they had recently discovered. Mantel does say Holbein rejects Cromwell's bible because it is too tattered and thumbed. A hint to his religiosity, so important to the book.
I feel I would like the book to really be the book that tells you how to keep your accounts. But I am also pleased that we now know what it actually is. It’s the split between Hilary’s Cromwell and the “real” Cromwell brought into sharp focus, rather than the seeping and bleeding of the stories and the remembrances.
Wow, Thomas Avery did have a beautiful Secretary Hand!
He did. I need to go back and have another look at the book as there are now specific entries I want pictures of.
What a captivating and lively post, Lucie! The chough paintings are beautiful too x
Thank you so much x