Chimp and wolf

So Me Cheeta has garnered most of the Booker longlist headlines, which I think is no bad thing. The prize has shown an increasing commercial nous since Ion Trewin took over as administrator; throwing a curve ball like this into the mix in order to make people who usually wouldn't give a rat's ass about literature notice is just good PR. Like Child 44 last year, Me Cheeta has no chance of winning, or even getting on to the short list, but it has generated so much extra coverage (if only because sub-editors could write headlines like 'Chimp can be Booker top banana').

I have not read all the books on the list, but I would be surprised if any are better than Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall. It is simply one of the best books I have read in quite some time, a wholly realised depiction of the Tudor court, focusing on Thomas Cromwell and his rise to power. I read it quite quickly, the re-read it two times in a row, because I just did not want to leave it.

Many historians seem to portray Cromwell - the man who paved the way for the break with Rome in order for Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn to marry - as corrupt or utterly ruthless. In literature, of course, he is the baddie who hounds Thomas More to his death in Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons. Mantel goes some way to rescuing Cromwell reputation. Her Cromwell is brilliant and utterly compelling; a brewer's son (his low birth is often remarked upon by nobles), linguist, warrior, statesman, lawyer who is "at home in courtroom or waterfront, bishop's palace or inn yard. He can draft a contract, train a falcon, draw a map, stop a street fight, furnish a house and fix a jury." Cromwell's humour contrasts with More's priggishness, hypocrisy and fundamentalism.

Death haunts this book. There is the fragility of simple daily life of the early modern period (Cromwell's wife and daughter are carried away in a day by the plague-like "sweating sickness") and the brutal, dangerous realpolitik at that fat bully-boy Henry VIII's court, where the axe or the stake were the end for so many. There is a poignancy that we know the main character will eventually go the way of More.

But Mantel's greatest achievement is to make an era which has been gone over time and again seem fresh and new. She has obviously done her research, but she wears it lightly, perhaps helped by her use of modernish dialogue.