CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician
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Another magnificent Mantel
PAUL DONOVAN recommends a superb conclusion to the writer’s trilogy of novels on Thomas Cromwell
MAJOR MANIPULATOR: Thomas Cromwell, portrayed by Wenceslaus Hollar
KENNY MacASKILL relishes a fictionalised account of the life and death of the principled Irish anti-colonialist, executed for betraying his English imperial masters
FIONA O’CONNOR admires an ambitious first novel that loosens South Africa’s rainbow collective to examine the racial tensions within
Aussie mining corporation murder, Liverpudlian ex-cop amnesia, a naive vigilante tries to reset capitalism, and the riddle of the dead psychoanalyst
SYLVIA HIKINS is persuaded by an entertaining play that the true miracle of Lourdes would be for attitudes toward disability to change
JAMIE BRITTON recommends this fine analysis of the architectural, ecological and infrastructural destruction of the Gaza Strip
The Mirror and the Light
by Hilary Mantel
Fourth Estate, £25
WITH The Mirror and the Light, Hilary Mantel concludes her trilogy of novels exploring both the life of Thomas Cromwell and Tudor politics.
It takes Cromwell from the height of his powers in 1536, when he was awarded the Order of the Garter by Henry VIII and extensive lands across the country, to the executioner’s block in the summer of 1540.
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