Cromwell is an outsider. He is the son of drunken, violent blacksmith and the novel begins with Walter Cromwell kicking his son almost to death in Putney. The narrative then leaps 27 years, to a time when Thomas Cromwell is "a little over forty years old". The missing years, which have made him what he is, remain a mystery; but there are hints of a secret that Cromwell keeps locked away even from himself.

He has emerged into middle age as a sober businessman with all the fascinating attributes of a master spy. He has an extraordinary range of abilities and skills: he is "at home in courtroom and waterfront, bishop's palace and yard. He can draft a contract, train a falcon, draw a map, stop a street fight, furnish a house and fix a jury." He knows the entire New Testament in Latin, and exactly how to stab to kill; he can draw out the membrane blinding a hound's eye with a steady hand and a curved needle. He is usually three jumps ahead of his powerful enemies, though we know how his tale will end.

Mantel emphasises the kindness of this ruthlessly ambitious self-made man. He is loyal even in misfortune to his master, Wolsey; though of course this may also be to his advantage - disloyal servants, like spies, become unemployable. He is generous to his household. He marries for advantage, but loves his wife and children. The sudden deaths of his wife and daughters are an unsentimentally heart-wrenching evocation of absolute and blank loss. Acts of God, in Mantel's world, are as shocking as the whims of tyrants or the brutality of the mob.

Most of the characters in Wolf Hall are revealed in moments of glancing ambiguity. Anne Boleyn may seem unambiguously on the make, sharp-tongued and vindictive, with black eyes "like the beads of an abacus...shiny and always in motion, as she makes calculations of her own advantage". Yet even she surprises us with pity, when she yearns in unaffected "infatuation" towards her screeching new-born baby, only to see the infant plucked up and swept away from her by ladies-in-waiting. Another lost child...