This is excellent, but very, very dense -- not for the faint-hearted. A fascinating insight into a man who remains a controversial figure in British history, almost 480 years after his death. Spoiler alert, Thomas Cromwell probably wasn't anything like the warm, cuddly, almost modern individual we know and love from Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall. But MacCulloch makes it clear how Cromwell broke the mold-- a common-born man, whose almost modern attitudes to faith, nationhood and service to your country would become so much the standard that we almost don't notice how unusual he was, until a scholar like MacCulloch points it out.

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