It's taken me a while to get around to this. I listened rather than read. It's long and a bit tedious in places, but it keeps you listening. It's the story of Thomas Cromwell, much reviled by history, but shown here in a more sympathetic light. It takes us from his earliest days, briefly through his sojourn in the army and as a wool merchant, to his progression at court to be Henry VIII's right hand man, especially in the matter of dissolving Henry's marriage to Catherine of Aragon and his marriage to Anne Boleyn in search of a male heir. Cromwell is a complex character, a wheeler-dealer when he needs to be, and with strong ideas how to better England, one small nudge at a time.