THOMAS CROMWELL: A LIFE (PB)

Thomas Cromwell is one of the most famous - or notorious - figures in English history. Born in obscurity in Putney, he became a fixer for Cardinal Wolsey in the 1520s. After Wolsey's fall, Henry VIII promoted him to a series of ever greater offices, and by the end of the 1530s he was effectively running the country for the King. He was ruthless, adept in the exercise of power, quietly determined in religious revolution. MacCulloch's biography for the first time reveals his true place in the making of modern England and Ireland, for good and ill.