I cannot agree that Hilary Mantel’s portrayals of Thomas More and of Thomas Cromwell in Wolf Hall are accurate or fair (Letters, 21 February). The trouble with grafting fiction on to historical fact is that the powerful impressions created are taken as historical fact by readers and viewers. The BBC’s dramatisation of Wolf Hall fixes Thomas More in popular imagination as an arch villain.As Catholics, especially if we are involved in the law, we learned with horror and embarrassment, from biographies, of More’s harsh and implacable pursuit of heretics. However, Eamon Duffy was surely right in seeing More as a man of his time, living in a society accustomed to death and violence which had as yet no concept of religious tolerance.Thomas More was, despite his faults, a
26 February 2015, The Tablet
Malign portrayal
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