Cranmer (almost) gets his man

In the glory days of the Church of England, when Archbishop Fisher was on the throne, real vicars had leisure for two defining activities — playing with train sets and reading detective novels. In these dog days they have to spend much more time on the day job. I had a day off recently reading Revelation — the detective novel vicars can read without a conscience because the “Inspector Morse’s Boss” character is none other than Archbishop Cranmer himself. Those were the days, when Archbishops of Canterbury had leisure to superintend detectives who could appear in novels for the clergy to read.

C. J. Sansom has a fine eye for every nuance of the last days of Henry VIII. He spots the various complex subcurrents of post-dissolution England perfectly — heaving filthy streets, rising middle class, and upheaval all round. This, his fourth Tudor historical thriller, is set in 1543. Henry VIII is become an increasingly unstable old dog — irascible, toothless but prone to bite anyway. Various heads have been rolling. Mainline reformers are hanging on in there by their fingernails, whilst trying to shoo an understandably reluctant Catherine Parr into Hank’s marital house of horrors. Out on the streets “Bible Men” are workshopping various forms of “radical biblical” religion with more zeal than understanding, trying to turn the C of E onto a fundamentalist associational sect. Revelation is a Name of the Rose type romp through the stews and marshes of Tudor London in pursuit of a Biblicist nutter — Bizarre Cluedo with murder weapons like apocalyptic fish-oil and exploding Maggots. This book is Excellent Escapism from a world where religious nutters plan mayhem whilst radical Bible men try to turn the C of E into a Biblicist sect. Sleep Tight tonight. Under Cranmer’s supervision, Shardlake, a very Anglican slight underachiever, almost gets his man, and the evil is flushed away. It all comes of handling the poetry of the Apocalypse like a textbook. Reader beware...