Here it is:
ARTS
Share
Hilary Mantel was the closest thing to a genius I’ve ever known
Wolf Hall director Peter Kosminsky exclusively reveals how his email correspondence with the late author guided his vision for the series
On June 16 2018, an email arrived from Hilary Mantel. Attached was the first part of what was eventually to become The Mirror and the Light, her final novel. Hilary and I had collaborated on the BBC adaptation of her first two Thomas Cromwell novels: Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies.
Now, after a hiatus caused in part by the death of her mother, Hilary was under way on the concluding novel of the trilogy, covering the last four desperate years of Cromwell’s life. She decided to send this to me in instalments, as she was writing it. The email exchanges which resulted, as I read and raised questions about these chapters, were all that was left to guide our adaptation of The Mirror and the Light, following her unexpected death, age 70, in September 2022
Generous spirit: Hilary Mantel in 2017
Generous spirit: Hilary Mantel in 2017
When, in the summer of 2013, my agent told me I was being asked to direct Wolf Hall, I thought it was a wind-up. I make contemporary political drama (such as The Government Inspector), shot with a hand-held camera. I would be the least appropriate person, so I thought, to direct a magnificent period drama based on two Booker Prize-winning novels.
Hilary reassured me. She had always imagined Wolf Hall in verité style, with the sound boom sliding into shot from time to time. “Remember these people don’t know they are historical characters,” she said. “Anne Boleyn doesn’t know she will be one of six, that she will die at the hands of a Calais swordsman. These people are just living their lives – like you or I.”
The first instalment ended abruptly with the death of Jane Seymour, with whom – in Hilary’s conceit – Cromwell had been in love, and which is one of the saddest moments in the novel. And yet the most intriguing aspect of this first section, for me, was the nature of the relationship between Cromwell and Lady Mary, the King’s eldest surviving – and at that point illegitimate – daughter.
It was clear that Mary feels drawn to Cromwell, perhaps even sexually captivated by him. What was less clear were Cromwell’s feelings for her. On page 149 of that first extract (included here by kind permission of Hilary’s husband, Gerald), Cromwell tells us: “… At Hackney she had said, in a low voice meant only for him: ‘Lord Cromwell, I am bound to you: I am bound to pray for you during my life …’ ”
I struggled to understand this. I wrote to Hilary, asking for guidance, apologising for being “dim”. Her reply was characteristically generous.
“Not dim at all. This is the book’s murkiest territory. The relationship, both personally and politically, is fraught with ambiguity. Both are deeply compromised by their dealings with each other …
“I think Cromwell discerns that Mary is attracted to him, in a complex, conflicted way that she almost hates. As an honourable man, he cannot act on that – it’s almost indecent, incestuous, breaks the rules of rank and hierarchy. His feelings towards her should (at the most) be fatherly, dutiful. But his subconscious can act without his permission …
“Mary is emotionally compromised or, as she would see it, morally compromised, because of the attraction she feels to him. She is angry – with herself.
“Edward, [Henry’s son, the future Edward VI], is only one small boy. There is every likelihood that at some stage Mary will be queen. She would have the backing of the old aristocracy, of all papists and, (for what it’s worth), public opinion. What Thomas Cromwell has to do is to ensure that, if she becomes queen, she doesn’t immediately execute him …”
Remarks like this were obviously hugely helpful when directing Mark Rylance (Cromwell) and Lilit Lesser (Mary). We had long conversations about where each character’s head and heart were, at each of their increasingly difficult encounters. Hilary went on: “On a personal level [Cromwell] finds [Mary] perplexing, irritating, hard to like. But in my novel, he is half-aware of her own complex feelings towards him. He knows he has a hold over her, and that when he tells her he will never see her or speak to her again if she defies her father, he knows that will work. It would be hugely convenient but also hugely inconvenient if the king’s daughter fell in love with him; it would be malign fairy tale territory. So, I think he manipulates her, but I don’t think he does it cynically. He has to save her life – if only because it will completely destroy Henry in the eyes of the world if he kills his own daughter …”
Is there a self-destructive quality to Cromwell? This drew the most thoughtful response from Hilary
These remarks caused me to wonder whether Cromwell had a hamartia, a fatal flaw. By 1540, this blacksmith’s son is the second most powerful person in the land: vastly wealthy, deputy to Henry VIII in matters of church and state. And yet he continues to attempt to accrue still more power, more wealth – alienating aristocracy, the church hierarchy and, eventually, even his sovereign in the process. Is there a self-destructive quality there? This question drew the longest and most thoughtful response from Hilary – written as she was in the very act of walking Cromwell to the scaffold.
“Think of that ladder he’s climbing. He began climbing as a boy in Putney. He has to keep moving. There is no point where he can balance or rest. He does not know where the top might be, or what happens when you reach it. But other people ‘know’ – the logical final step is to displace the king, and this is what he is accused of …
“Add to that, a fair measure of idealism. He believes he can improve the lives of the people in the country through social and economic reform, but entrenched interests are in his way …
“Cromwell has an unending appetite for a scrap. He thrives on conflict. He’s bouncy, resilient, physical. There was a time he learned to efface himself, but that time is past. At this point, let’s say it passes with the era of Anne Boleyn, you know this man is in the room …
“I tend to think that in modern times we have misinterpreted or under-interpreted the Greek view, by locating the ‘flaw’ in individual character: whereas really the cause of downfall is located in both the inner and outer worlds, which mirror each other …”
Hilary’s final email remarks to me were the most telling. Despite her many years of scholarly research, it was her understanding of the human experience that made her work so extraordinary. She wrote: “I think a huge question explored in the book is the question of self-fashioning – how far can you resist the script written for you? We still have to answer this question in the present day. We perceive that we are not just constrained by our position in the socio-economic set-up, but by our genetic inheritance. We endlessly debate what’s nature and what’s nurture, as if we could separate the two. I do think we are made by our childhoods, indeed by our early infancy – what we know now about neuroplasticity tells us that a great deal of rapid development takes place after birth, and hence is porous to the environment. And I believe we are shaped by forces within ourselves we hardly recognise … But this is not to say we are not free to change …”
I think that Hilary was the closest thing to a genius I’ve met in my lifetime. As such, it was often hard for me to fully understand all the layers of her meaning. But these emailed reflections, given so freely, offered an extraordinary insight into the complex world she had spent the last almost 20 years of her life creating. It has been the honour of my life to act as its temporary custodian, to try to faithfully represent it in a very different medium, and to a very different audience.”
‘Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light’ premieres on BBC One and BBC iPlayer tonight; new episodes released weekly.
Registering is free, easy, and means you can join the discussion, watch threads and lots more.
Register now »Already registered? Log in with:
Gransnet »
