Bring Up the Bodies

Bring Up the Bodies is the second of Hilary Mantel's three novels about Thomas Cromwell, taking up the story directly after Wolf Hall. Cromwell has become Master Secretary to the King's Privy Council. The King and his minister are guests of the Seymour family at Wolf Hall, where Cromwell is drawn to the Seymours' daughter Jane and Henry VIII begins to spend time with her. His marriage to Anne Boleyn, sometimes affectionate and often given over to quarrels, has left the King without peace or a son, and he tells Cromwell plainly that he can no longer live as he has been living.

Cromwell undertakes to end the marriage, and the novel stays close to his point of view as the matter is worked out through questioning, accumulated testimony and the men he uses to gather it. The Boleyn circle is dismantled at court while the Seymour family waits to see what follows, and the narrative keeps one eye on the private side of Cromwell's life, including the household he returns to at the end of a day's work on the King's business.

The book was published in 2012 as the middle volume of Mantel's three novels about Thomas Cromwell, from his rise to his fall. It took the Man Booker Prize that year as well as the Costa Book of the Year, and The Mirror & the Light completed the sequence in 2020.