Arts, Books, History, Literature

(Biography) Book Review – Thomas Cromwell: A Life

REVIEW

IT is generally through Hilary Mantel’s inspiring and prize-winning novels, such as Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies, that most people today have come to know the Tudor politician Thomas Cromwell. TV adaptations of the books, through the glowering performances of Mark Rylance, have also added to our understanding of Cromwell’s character.

But, what kind of man was the real, historical Cromwell? Six years in the making, Diarmaid MacCulloch’s monumental biography attempts to answer that question in painstaking, and even in excruciating and fine detail.

It comes as no great surprise that some of the most memorable scenes in Wolf Hall have no basis in fact. Novelists do that as they are prone to make things up.

The book’s opening sequence has a young Cromwell taking a terrible beating from his father. Not true, according to MacCulloch. There is no real evidence that the father was a brutal bully. There is little record of Cromwell’s early life at all. He was a little-known and obscure brewer’s son from Putney.

What is striking is how often and how closely Mantel did follow the historical record.

Cromwell’s most notable trait was his ruthlessness in pursuit of power. Both novelist and biographer make that abundantly clear. He achieved it because he found a solution to what was known as “The King’s Great Matter”.

Henry VIII had decided that he had breached a biblical prohibition in marrying Katherine of Aragon, who had been his deceased brother’s wife. The lack of a male heir was proof of God’s wrath.

Henry’s eagerness to annul his marriage was increased by his passion for Anne Boleyn. Unexpectedly, Anne insisted that she would not share Henry’s bed unless she was his wife. (Her sister Mary, an earlier lover of the king, had displayed no such scruples.)

It was Cromwell who found a way to fulfill the King’s wishes. He smoothed the path to Anne’s royal marriage.

Yet, when she also failed to produce a male heir, he turned on her. Anne already resented her husband’s chief minister. She was heard to say that she would see “his head off his shoulders”.

But it was Cromwell who saw her to the scaffold. Henry already had his eye on a young noblewoman named Jane Seymour.

He complained that “he had been seduced and forced” into marriage with Anne “through spells and charms”. The speed with which Anne was toppled is remarkable. Cromwell was behind charges, almost certainly untrue, of adultery. She was even accused of incest with her brother.

She was executed in the Tower in front of a thousand spectators. Prominent amongst them was her nemesis, Thomas Cromwell. Eleven days after her death, Henry married Jane Seymour.

Throughout this biography, MacCulloch suggests an element of sadism in Cromwell’s character that is absent in Mantel’s depiction. He recommended the torture of a prisoner with the words, “pinch him with pains”.

When he heard that some monks from the London Charterhouse had died in Newgate prison, he was furious. He swore that he’d had something far more unpleasant in mind for them.

Cromwell’s own tragedy was that he served a master even more ruthless than he was.

Mantel will tell of her hero’s downfall in the third, as yet unpublished, volume of her trilogy.

MacCulloch’s final chapters show Henry’s willingness to cast off his chief minister as soon as his usefulness came to an end.

Anne of Cleves was the unwitting catalyst of his downfall. After the death of Jane Seymour in childbirth, Cromwell was determined that the King should next marry a German Protestant. Anne fitted the bill.

Unfortunately, when she arrived in England, Henry was appalled by her.

To his embarrassment, he couldn’t make love to her either on his wedding night or on any succeeding night. Cromwell had to face the fact that “his own protracted diplomacy had resulted in the King’s humiliation”.

Even worse, Henry came to believe that his chief minister was gossiping about his problems between the sheets. Cromwell was doomed.

 

HE was arrested on June 10, 1540. From prison, he wrote to the King, ending his letter with the words, “I cry for mercy! mercy! mercy!”

The only mercy he was given was the privilege of being beheaded rather than facing burning at the stake (for heresy) or hanging, drawing and quartering (for treason).

Even then, one account suggests that the executioner botched the job and took several swipes of the axe to kill him.

On the very same day that Cromwell died on the scaffold, Henry married his fifth wife, Katherine Howard.

There is a paradox at the heart of this epic work of scholarship. Despite the relentless accumulation of detail, Thomas Cromwell himself remains a mystery. He is as unknowable at the end of the book as he is at the beginning.

It might even need a novelist of Mantel’s exceptional gifts to bring such an enigmatic character fully to life.

– ‘Thomas Cromwell: A Life’ by Diarmaid MacCulloch is published by Allen Lane for £30

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China, Economic, United States

America’s economic battle with China risks global slump

GLOBAL ECONOMY

PRESIDENT Trump continues to show no mercy in his dealings with China. Emboldened by the robust American economy and the continuing rally on Wall Street, Donald Trump is convinced that tariff barriers will do more damage to Beijing than Washington, and that eventually his approach will force concessions.

The U.S. President’s decision to impose a 10 per cent tariff on £150bn of goods from China means almost half the products shipped from the People’s Republic to America – with the notable exception of some Apple items – are subject to tariffs, raising prices for US businesses and consumers.

These new measures are in addition to the £38bn of tariffs imposed in July and August.

China, led by President Xi Jinping, lost no time in retaliating by finding another £45bn of US goods to penalise. And the country’s best-known entrepreneur, Jack Ma, founder of digital champion Alibaba, said his promise to create up to 1m jobs in the US was no longer viable because of tensions.

 

DESPITE the threat of higher prices for Americans on goods ranging from textiles to electronics, Trump’s tough line will play well in “rust-belt” states as the Republicans seek to seize back the political initiative ahead of November’s mid-term elections.

The White House’s choice of trade as a weapon to curb Chinese influence and expansionism has been met with horror by the International Monetary Fund in Washington and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Geneva.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have also joined the chorus of critics, warning that world economic output was “hitting a plateau” because of US-China trade wars and fragility in emerging markets.

As the apostles of free trade, it argues that much global prosperity, notably in Asia and emerging markets, has been built on an open trading system.

The Great Depression of the 1930s was the result of nations imposing ever-higher barriers on vital trade such as commodities and farm produce. Despite the criticism there is a conviction in the White House that America’s hardline policy will produce dividends.

Larry Kudlow, the White House’s chief economic adviser, declared: “We are open to talks, if there are serious talks.” In May, China agreed to reduce the tariffs on imported American cars from 25 per cent to 15 per cent, to ease strained relations.

Mr Trump has also been encouraged to act tough after his success in bullying Mexico into accepting new rules for trading. Mexico now has to show that products it assembles contain at least 70 per cent of US content before they can move across borders.

The U.S. President has been able to take on China with some impunity because the American economy is going great guns. Growth has exceeded wildest expectations in the second quarter, at an annual rate of 4.1 per cent, creating jobs.

Farming communities have been hardest hit by Chinese retaliation, which has targeted soya bean production, pig products and beef. Trump has bought farmers’ silence with an increase of £9.1bn in subsidies.

So, what does this chest-beating machoism mean for other Western nations?

The big concern is that if the tit-for-tat war carries on for any length of time, Beijing might flood other countries with cheap goods. Complaints of Chinese dumping of cheap steel and aluminum on international markets have led to swingeing penalties being imposed by the countries where the steel is sold – while the cases are examined at the WTO.

The difficulty for Beijing is that it doesn’t import anything like £150bn of goods from the US though it can slow supply chains – such as components for the iPhone and personal computers.

The importance of better trading relations with neighbours has never been more critical. China recently sealed a far-reaching trade deal with India. In Europe, it reinforces the need for Britain to connect to the EU’s market of 500m people and not allow Brexit to damage relationships.

The biggest concern is that the US-China trade war comes at a moment of potential peril for the global economy. Rising US interest rates allied to domestic political upheaval are driving several market economies, including Turkey, Argentina and South Africa, to the brink.

When the financial inducements of Donald Trump’s tax cuts wear off and American retail prices rise – because of the higher costs of Chinese goods – economic conditions could deteriorate rapidly. The trade fracas might just prove to be the start of the next global slump.

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Britain, Business, Economic, Government, Society, Technology

The rise of automated robots is creating fear in the workplace. But why?

ECONOMIC & TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES

WE shouldn’t be surprised if trade union’s such as the TUC is waxing lyrical about how robots and new technology will liberate us all to work less for the same money.

After all, no less an authority than Karl Marx claimed automation would help free the miserable proletariat from their mundane drudgery.

John Maynard Keynes predicted in his 1930 Essay, Economic Possibilities For Our Grandchildren, that technology would allow people to work no more than 15 hours a week. “Three days a week is quite enough,” he opined. Keynes didn’t have any grandchildren, but if he had, it’s highly unlikely they would be basking in hours of leisure time.

Employment in the UK is at its highest since 1974, when ABBA won the Eurovision song contest and we actually did have a three-day week (but for all the wrong reasons).

Not everyone sees the advance of robots and technology in the workplace, in warehouses, manufacturing plants or even in new possible areas such as care homes, as a good thing. Fears that machines will make humans redundant or enslave us are as old as technology itself. Crackpot ideas such as Amazon’s robot-driven cage for its employees – now mercifully ditched – is an example that doesn’t exactly help.

In a fascinating speech on the future of work, Bank of England governor Mark Carney said that, in the past, machines substituted for “hands” or manual labour. Now artificial intelligence means they might replace “heads” or brain work, leaving “hearts” to people – or, in other words, work that involves emotion, imagination, innovation, caring and creativity, which could translate into more fulfilling work that adds value to the economy.

 

HISTORY tells us automation does not take away human work, but simply shifts people from one type of work to another.

One of the biggest technological revolutions receives virtually no attention from economists because it has mainly affected women. But, by making housework so much easier, the spread of domestic appliances such as vacuum cleaners and washing machines has arguably changed the workplace and society as much as the smartphone.

The idea that robots will take employment away from humans rests on the “lump of labour” fallacy that there are a fixed number of jobs in an economy, so if a robot takes one, a human being will be consigned to the dole queue. In reality, however, it is not like that. Economies are dynamic, so if robots add to productivity and growth then more, not fewer, jobs will be created for humans.

This doesn’t mean the introduction of technology will be seamless. Overall, technology may be beneficial, but individuals can and do lose out if their jobs are taken over by machines and they are not able to find alternative employment quickly.

What Keynes ignored in his analysis is that many of us, probably including himself, have workaholic tendencies and absolutely don’t want to be idle.

For anyone who wonders why multimillionaire chief executives don’t just put their feet up and enjoy their loot, think of it this way: the higher paid someone is, and the more status and admiration they glean from their work, the less incentive they have in taking more leisure time.

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