It goes without saying that Mantel can do historical fiction as good as anyone currently on the circuit. Nobody does court intrigue as relentlessly gripping as Mantel. And by creating her epic Thomas Cromwell trilogy (the final part is still in production) she has, wittingly or otherwise, shone a spotlight on the embryonic development of English capitalism asserting itself at every opportunity, invariably at the expense of the ancient structure of Lords, Earls and Dukes in Medieval England. Cromwell unconsciously represents a new class of money men, growing rich off the proceeds of the rapidly expanding wool industry and of course, something more familiar and contemporary the loaning of money at high interest and the calling in of bad debts.

And so Mantel does us a great service, because by showing us, in fictionalised form, the very beginnings of English Capitalism, she reminds us that everything human has a beginning, and in the fullness of time, has an end. This is a quite revolutionary thought because capitalist historiography and capitalist mass media work 24/7 in creating the impression that capitalism is forever.

Mantel offers her readers too many illuminating lines to suggest that she is not fully aware of the socio-economic changes that lay entangled behind the religious noise and commotions of the European Reformation. Henry’s obsession with a male heir and Protestant obsessing with a more accessible Christianity is really a lot of hot air compared to the seismic economic shifts that were taking place across Europe. Merchants in the city states of Italy, and more latterly in Germany, Holland and England were desperately keen to break with the stifling diktats of Rome not so much for reasons of religious doctrine but for the economic freedoms that might be created. I’m fairly certain that Mantel gets all this, though of course her prime purpose is to entertain rather than to educate. But the joy of reading Mantel lies not just in the absorbing historical fictions that she painstakingly creates but that her writing is always historically plausible.

In actual fact, as Mantel is quick to point out, historians can only guess as to the precise motives and character of a figure like Cromwell, so Mantel is free to create his character for us. We do know with some certainty that Cromwell grew from very lowly circumstances to become one of the richest men in England and he did so by continually outwitting his supposedly aristocratic superiors. Cromwell it seems likely, was more interested in money than religious doctrine, and was willing and able to use both sides of the religious divide to further his own ambitions- a very revolutionary perspective given the extreme doctrinaire atmosphere of the times. His true religion one suspects was wealth, personal aggrandisement, and survival at all costs the very attributes of a modern corporate executive. If modern day capitalism is looking for a worthy historical standard bearer, forget Margaret Thatcher, they could do a lot worse than in resurrecting the memory of Thomas Cromwell.

Almost immediately, Mantel sets about creating the economic background to the bloody court intrigues that are about to unfold. Mantel writes:

‘In England it’s been raining, more or less, for a decade, and the harvest will be poor again. The price of wheat is forecast to rise to twenty shillings a quarter. So what will the labourer do this winter, the man who earns five or six pence a day? The profiteers have moved in already, not just on the Isle of Thanet, but through the shires. His men are on their trail.’ P33/34

Compare this wonderful and illuminating background detail to the bland and predictable Tudor dramas regularly served up by the BBC over the years. Even in their drama department the BBC is fixated with the comings and goings of royalty and totally blind to the travails of the working man. Not so Hilary Mantel. And a few pages later, in a passage, which I feel sure was aimed precisely in the direction of Cameron and Osborne, Mantel paints a picture of Cromwell that would surely shame the above two gentlemen:

‘He (Cromwell) is preparing a bill for Parliament to give employment to men without work, to get them waged and out mending the roads, making the harbours, building walls against the Emperor or any other opportunist. We could pay them he calculated, if we levied an income tax on the rich; we could provide shelter, doctors if they needed them, their subsistence; we could all have the fruits of their work, and their employment would keep them from becoming bawds, or pick-pockets or highway robbers, all of which men will do if they see no other way to eat.’ P43

Ah yes, spoken like a true Keynesian economist. No austerity budget for this Master Secretary, it’s pump priming the economy in times economic downturn. Turn on the taps and get the infrastructure projects going. Of course Parliament turned down his bill just as our modern day Government of millionaires would do, but no matter, Mantel has had her fun.

The class nature of the main protagonists is spelt out clearly enough. Charles Brandon, The Duke of Suffolk rebukes Cromwell:

‘Get back to your abacus, Cromwell. You are only for fetching in money, when it comes to the affairs of nations you cannot deal, you are a common man of no status, and the king himself says so, you are not fit to talk to princes.’ P128

Quite so, but time is on Cromwell’s side, or at least it is on the side of capital as opposed to merely aristocratic rank. As the decades and centuries roll by it is precisely those that are good at fetching the money who will come to control the affairs of nations. Mantel, speaking through Cromwell, makes the point without equivocation;

‘But chivalry’s day is over. One day soon moss will grow in the tilt yard. The days of the money lender have arrived, and the days of the swaggering privateer; banker sits down with banker, and kings are their waiting boys.’ P142

And then comes my favourite passage, a passage that in many ways encapsulates much of what has transpired over these past five hundred years. This is Mantel at her polemical best:

‘In March, Parliament knocks back his poor law. It was too much for the Commons to digest, that rich men might have some duty to the poor; that if you get fat, as gentlemen of England do, you have some responsibility to the men turned off the land, the labourers without labour, the sowers without a field. England needs roads, forts, harbours, bridges. Men need work. It’s a shame to see them begging their bread, when honest labour could keep the realm secure. Can we not put them together, the hands and the task?

‘But Parliament cannot see how it is the state’s job to create work. Are not these matters in God’s hands, and is not poverty and dereliction part of his eternal order? To everything there is a season: a time to starve and a time to thieve. If rain falls for six months solid and rots the grain in the fields, there must be providence in it; for God knows his trade. It is an outrage to the rich and enterprising, to suggest that they should pay an income tax, only to put bread in the mouths of the workshy. And if Secretary Cromwell argues that famine provokes criminality: well, are there not hangmen enough?’ P204/5

Substitute the market for God and you have all the same old cant that has been wafting around Parliament for centuries. ‘God Knows his trade’ is much the same mantra as ‘You cannot buck the market’ Feudalism has given way to Capitalism but the indifference and inhumanity of class rule remains a constant.

They call Mantel’s work ‘historical fiction’ but I am starting to think it marks the beginning of a new literary genre, one that speaks to the present while recreating the past, in the same way the great science-fiction talks to the present by creating fanciful futures. But then again, I suppose all great writers of fiction seek to address present day concerns in their work be it historical, futuristic or contemporary. And Hilary Mantel, through her historical fiction, is definitely shaping up to be among the greats.