Contrasting Contrarians: Hilary Mantel and Josephine Tey
Reviewed by Melanie Jackson
“Truth is the daughter of time”
— attributed to Francis Bacon
As they did in life at the court of Henry VIII, two rivals now face off in side-by-side portraits at the Frick Museum. Artist Hans Holbein the Younger, who painted both, made Thomas More kind and intelligent. Thomas Cromwell, sulky and malevolent.
When More refused to concede that Henry’s first marriage was illegitimate, the king and Cromwell had him beheaded. To their annoyance, Pope Pius XI then canonized More.
The late novelist Hilary Mantel carried out her own execution of More—of his reputation, that is, in Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies and The Mirror & the Light. Mantel’s More is a sadist who enjoys torturing heretics. Making Cromwell moral and sympathetic, Mantel conveniently ignores his and Henry’s infamous looting of treasure from churches and monasteries. That’s quite an ignore.
I recognize Mantel’s originality as a fiction writer in devising such contrarian views. Still, were three novels, the final an excruciating 900+ pages, necessary? Thomas More, for one, wrote his classic social-political satire Utopia in under 200.
Segue and shout-out to Josephine Tey, who kept her enthralling The Daughter of Time to just over 200. In that 1951 novel, Tey was as contrarian as Mantel—though because of, not despite, a kind-faced portrait.
Bedridden and bored, Tey’s detective protagonist happens on a photo of the London National Portrait Gallery’s Richard III. As Holbein did with More, the unknown 16th century artist made Richard likeable.
This was the evil, repulsive Richard III who, c.f. Shakespeare, murdered his heir-to-the-throne nephews? Forget boredom. Grant starts researching. He finds no police-worthy evidence of Richard’s guilt. Besides, others had motives. One qui bono would be Henry VII, who succeeded Richard as king.
With The Daughter of Time, people became fascinated by Richard III, whether for, against or, as Ricardians urge, staying open-minded. The fascination endures, as evidenced by the first-ever theatre adaptation of Daughter soon to open in London’s West End.
Tey made history tantalizing. Why accept others’ theories? Why not, like Grant, do your own sleuthing? Philippa Langley did, and in 2012 discovered the Plantagenet king’s burial spot under a Leicester garage.
Not a bad legacy for Tey. Contrarians, it seems, can be constructive.
About the Authors
Hilary Mantel (1952-2022) studied law at the London School of Economics and the University of Sheffield. Moving to Botswana, then Saudi Arabia, with her geologist husband, Mantel wrote her first novel, Every Day Is Mother’s Day, published in 1985. They returned to England where Mantel, despite suffering from endometriosis, kept writing. In 2009 she won the Booker Prize for Wolf Hall.
Josephine Tey and Gordon Daviot were the novelist and playwright pennames, respectively. of Scottish-born Elizabeth MacKintosh (1896-1952). Though Tey, as she was best known, always loved writing, she wasn’t that studious at school, preferring acrobatics. While a schoolteacher she had short stories and poems published. In her first published novel, The Man in the Queue (1929), Tey introduced her protagonist, Inspector Alan Grant.
About the Reviewer
A former journalist, Melanie Jackson is a free-lance Vancouver writer/editor for corporate communications, magazines, and newspapers.
Melanie is also the author of such middle-grade/young-adult suspensers as the Dinah Galloway Mystery Series (Orca Book Publishers). Like Henry the whale, Dinah is the impulsive type. Other novels by Melanie include The Big Dip, Death Drop and Medusa's Scream. The Canadian Children’s Book Centre named the latter a Best Book, Middle Readers, 2018 and gave Melanie a TD-CCBC Book Week touring-author award. For more information, visit Melanie at The Writers’ Union of Canada.
Book Details:
Wolf Hall
Harper Perennial, December 13, 2011
Language: English
Paperback: 672 pages
ISBN-10: 1554687780. ISBN-13: 978-1554687787
Bring Up the Bodies
Harper Perennial, March 3, 2020
Language: English
Paperback, 432 pages
ISBN-10: 1554687802. ISBN-13: 978-1554687800
The Mirror & the Light
Harper Perennial, March 10, 2020
Language: English
Paperback: 122 pages
ISBN-10: 1443413739. ISBN-13: 978-1443413732
The Daughter of Time
Touchstone, November 19, 1995
Language: English
Paperback: 208 pages
ISBN 10: 0684803860. ISBN 13: 9780684803869
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