The Mirror and the Light, the conclusion to Dame Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy, was published in March, and has since been nominated for both the Booker Prize and the Women’s Prize for Fiction. It was reviewed by Alec Ryrie in the Church Times here. 

On this week’s podcast — taken from our archive — Dame Hilary and Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch reflect on the life of Thomas Cromwell and his place in the Reformation. They were speaking in July 2019 at an event to mark the 900th anniversary of Launde Abbey, which Cromwell was fond of visiting.

In part one, we hear presentations from each of them about how, as a novelist and historian respectively, they approached the Putney boy who became Henry VIII’s chief minister. You can listen to the second half of their discussion here, and an edited record of the full conversation is available here.

Both The Mirror and the Light and Diarmaid MacCulloch’s Thomas Cromwell: A life can be purchased from the Church House Bookshop website.

Click the play button above to listen to this podcast. You can also listen to the Church Times Podcast on the Church Times app for iPhone and iPad, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, and most other podcast platforms.