conclusion of the Wolf Hall trilogy, I want, if I can, to take you back to

the beginning because it's very easy to think of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies

as being very established in their form and their success. I can see

two Booker Prizes up there and of course many years ago when you first started

writing them none of this was assured. And so I want to start with one of the

most obvious questions which is why Thomas Cromwell?

Why did you want to write about him?

HM: I think once you become an author, well, probably even before you

become an author, you have your antennae out for subjects that will keep

you interested, keep the reader intrigued, that will last. What everyone's

in search of is the inexhaustible subject really. And I thought of writing

about Thomas Cromwell a long, long time ago but wasn't ready to do it at that

stage because I knew it would be an enormous project. But I think what

engaged me was the untold story. That here you have a man who is central to

some of the most famous episodes in English history but when you look for

him in fiction, in drama, where is he? There's a kind of blank and why is this?

And also then turning to history, why he had such a bad press. And that in itself

intrigued me, the black reputation. Is it deserved, is there another way of looking

at those events. And those questions were all in my mind when I eventually began.

I didn't know at that stage I would be writing a trilogy.

It was a long process of exploration before I actually began to write.

W: That sort of historical research that you must have done before sort of

putting pen to paper if you like, it takes me actually to a question

I want to ask you which was about the man and about your portrait of him which

is notably, as people mentioned when the books were published, more

sympathetic than some previous biographies. And I suppose even his

portrait by Holbein. You sort of see that face and he has this, as is

remarked in the book, that he looks like a murderer and somebody says 'Did you not

know that?' And you sort of paint a portrait of this man and I wondered

whether that more sympathetic portrayal came from the historical research or was

it more to do with your instinct as a novelist in fleshing him out?

HM: It's a question of perspective really. Because the story is told

looking over Thomas Cromwell's shoulder and it's very much concerned with his

evolving perceptions of the world and it is his story. Not Thomas More's story or

Anne Boleyn's story. If it were told from their point of view the events would look very

different. I think that has proved a little bit hard, particularly for

historians to understand, that a novelist doesn't set out to be neutral. They're

telling a story from inside their character. But having said that, once I

engaged with a topic I found that most of the biographical work on Cromwell was

biased, it was inaccurate, it was perfunctory. And what had happened

is that mistakes had got in there and they've been rolled forward from one

historian to another, no one saying stop, let's go back to the record, let's

identify the gaps and let's see what we find with a fresh eye.

Now, last year Diarmaird MacCulloch brought out a wonderful biography of Thomas Cromwell

where he has gone back over all the material and though he remains a very

difficult subject for a biographer I think that is a triumph of history

writing. And a great pleasure for me to see some of those errors worked through,

worked out of the system, hopefully never to bounce back. But you can't be sure

of that. It takes a long, long time to change perceptions of a historical

figure. And I think the interesting thing is that the academic assessment of

Thomas Cromwell and the popular historian's assessment diverged a whole

generation ago. But academic historians, while seeing Cromwell's importance, are

not particularly concerned with what he was like as a person. Whereas the popular

historians, the dramatists and the novelists, insofar as they engage with

him at all, have been satisfied to keep rolling forward this portrait of a caricature villain.

W: You mentioned the fact that we are very much on his

shoulder and one of the other joys for the reader is the fact that you have

this present tense narration and that is so distinctive in these books but I

wonder whether that was always your intention. When you sat down to write did

you know that that was how you're going to write it or did it come through the process of writing?

HM: I can go back very vividly to the moment of beginning the

trilogy, to writing those first few paragraphs. And with any novel

what you want is to hear its note, its tone. And if you hear that truly from the

beginning in a sense you can't be knocked off course. There may be all

sorts of complications and difficulties but as long as you can keep hearing that

true note. So the question I was asking myself is what is this novel going to

sound like. But actually as soon as I began writing, from the first sentence, it

became visual. First of all I was hearing the voice of Cromwell's father shouting

'So now get up!' at this fifteen year old boy who's been kicked, is bleeding, has fallen

on the cobbles. There's the voice in the air above him but also I could see as if

through his narrow vision his father's boot on the cobble, his own blood. And so

the question was then when is this happening? Now, in the present tense.

Because he thinks he's going to die. He thinks ten seconds and I'm out. And if

so, this is no case for leisurely retrospection. This is a case of are we

going to survive our next few breaths. And therefore it commanded the present

tense, there didn't seem to be any choice. Nor was there any choice of viewpoint

because who's looking at this? Young Cromwell is looking at it. We're right behind his eyes.

W: The question I think when you're reading is what is

motivating this man? And there's a point at which he says 'I'm just trying to

survive the week', it's a question of survival. When you're dealing with

that level of power at which he's at. Did you feel that you

were feeling he had different motivations at different times or is

there a single force that's sort of pushing him along. It feels very much

like it's escaping his father in the first book, maybe it's about

furthering himself in the second book and maybe something else entirely in the third book.

HM: I think when he says oh I'm just trying to get through the week, don't

take that too seriously. That's his disclaimer. Don't come at me with anything

more complex for the minute. But as another character says, 'Cromwell always

has a plan.' And as we know his plans come to fruition. So yes he always has

his eye on the long term but at the same time there is always a problem, a

challenge, adversity to be overcome in the next five minutes. He can see the

big picture but there are moments in all three books when survival is the

imperative and it's as narrow as that. Moments of terrible peril where he

realises everything is in equipoise and one breath can destroy him. And I

think his whole project and this is why he's such a fascinating subject: it's unlikely.

That a man from Cromwell's background could rise to such a position

of power, not just in England but in Europe.

He's a man with a vision but a man who has to sustain that in the face of the

teeth of opposition on an hourly basis.

W: It's a fascinating study of power and of

course power has provided the narrative drive for some incredibly successful TV

series, we think about The Sopranos or Succession, other plays and novels. Having

dealt with it so closely yourself through these three books what have you

learned about what motivates people to seek power or maybe those who don't seek

it as well. The way that the machinations of power work, what have you learnt?

HM: Well I'm just now working on a theatre version. I'm at the very

beginning of that process. And there's a moment in the script where the situation

concerns Henry's daughter, the Princess Mary. And people are saying to Cromwell

well you have to believe Mary when she says she doesn't want to become queen,

she has no ambition to rule. And Cromwell says 'We all want to rule.' And from his

point of view, his personality set up, that is absolutely true. But I suppose I

think it's true. If you take power in its widest sense. We all need our little

meed of power to survive and prosper, even within the ambit of our own families our

little world when we are children, none of us are strangers to the struggle for

advantage. But having said that although the challenges, if you look at

it in the narrow sense, I think you're talking about politics, then I think the

challenges are different these days. The Tudors didn't have to contend with media

scrutiny, they didn't have to account to the general public for their actions. But

at the same time the consequences of a mistake were calamitous. You played with

your life, not your job. And I think there may be a sort of politician's mentality

that is necessary for survival and success that not all of us share in

that. I think such people often have a character that may be quite deep and

complex but it's not in itself introspective because they can't dwell

on the consequences of their actions. It's always next thing, next thing. Being

ever ready to confront that is an interesting challenge for a writer

because you're concerned with the inner workings of someone who by definition is

turned to the outside world. So there's a limit to how much Cromwell knows himself.

And I hope that as the third book proceeds, the reader will be saying yes,

you tell me that, Cromwell, but I know better because I know you from the inside.

W: With the work that you've done adapting the books for the stage

with Mike Poulton and with the actor Ben Miles, I wondered whether any of that

had actually fed back into the writing of the third book. Have you found that

the Cromwell that you're writing in The Mirror and the Light has been influenced

by the work that you've seen on stage?Particularly with the work you've done

with Ben Miles embodying that character.

HM: I think the rehearsal process,

it was something that fascinated me. I've always thought of writing as

an inherently dramatic activity. In that before you write a scene, and I always do

think in scenes, you prepare and you prepare and there you stand nervously in

the wings of it for perhaps quite some time and then you step on into the light.

And it may not go the way you planned. I do find writing hard work

and hard on the nerves because for me it is such an involving activity. It's not

simply a cerebral activity, it uses up the whole of you. And you have to be

prepared to be surprised and to allow yourself to go with the process. So I

found a lot of congruence between what the actors were doing and the way I

think of my own work. And Ben Miles has evolved the character not simply through

the storyline but through different iterations in different theatres with a

script that was also evolving. And I found the insights that he would have, I

would think, yes, I will have that for book three. And there are moments

when the narrative loops back to tell us about things we already know from Wolf

Hall or Bring up the Bodies but with his spin on them. So we now see or recognise

some aspect of them that we didn't get first time around. The

viewpoint has just shifted a little and we're being told slightly more. As if

almost the camera angle shifted. So I found that a fascinating process because

it meant that all three books were in play at any one time. Rather than being a

continuation, the third book becomes a process of continual overlapping,

enwrapping, every thread being held in tension.

W: The Mirror and The Light is a hugely satisfying conclusion to this trilogy.

I wonder if we could look at the title first. It's a phrase that Cromwell uses

to describe the king and I wondered if you could tell us about the relevance of

that phrase and why it's the right title for this book.

HM: The Mirror and The Light is a phrase that Cromwell himself used to describe Henry's kingship

and it's in a letter he wrote to Thomas Wyatt when Wyatt was abroad as an ambassador.

And when I came across that phrase it seemed to me to sum up the project if you like

because what the third book does is to hold up a mirror to what's gone before

and cast new light on what's gone before. So whilst already a metaphor it became a

different order of metaphor and its weird beauty struck me. And the way it

came to me that it was the right title was I was in East Sussex which became

very much a Cromwell part of the country, on the Downs there at

sunset one day and saw the sun against a shimmering, silver, clear sky. And the phrase

came back to me. So not only did I take it for the book title but I also

described a scene of Cromwell and his son Gregory riding across the Downs on

the way to their new properties and thus wrapped it into the book.

W: The great thing about writing from history is that we don't have to worry about

spoilers because everyone knows what's going to happen. But what can readers

expect from this final book? It must be quite something for you to hand over, if

you like, to the reader the final part of this trilogy.

HM: What the third book does is to take us through the final four years of Thomas Cromwell's life,

taking up the story at the moment of Anne Boleyn's execution

and watching his triumphant rise and his successive overcoming of obstacles and