PHOTOGRAPHS: EMMA HARDY, AGATA POSPIESZYNSKA, ILLUSTRATION ERTÉ © SEVENARTS LTD
EDITOR’S LETTER
Below: a Celine by
Hedi Slimane look
from ‘Field of dreams’
(page 188)I found myself mesmerised by one particular portrait: a
sur pr isingly sma ll, da rk oi l of a n unlovely ma n. Pa st y a nd
pigg y- eyed, dressed in black , he sta res cold ly away f rom t he
viewer, one hand firmly grasping what you suspect must be an
order for an enemy’s downfall. Hans Holbein’s depiction of
Thomas Cromwell, though painted in an era of vanity portraits,
is deeply unflattering. It must be, at least in part, responsible for
a grim reputation that has echoed down the centuries; and yet
t he sit ter himsel f, t hat most a st ute of politica l operators,
commissioned it. So what was he thinking? I stood for a long
time in front of it, trying to puzzle him out. It made perfect
sense when I found out later that Holbein’s portrayal had
inspired Hilary Mantel to begin her exploration of Cromwell’s
life. ‘It was the deficiency of the portrait that pushed me on,’ she
has explained. ‘I thought, “I’ll try and find him.”’
The rest, of course, is publishing history. Both Wolf Hall and
its sequel Bring Up the Bodies won the Booker Prize (making
Mantel simultaneously the first woman and the first British
author to win it twice). To mark the publication of the third andG I
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Years ago, on a visit to the Frick Collection in New York,