A GRIPPING TALE OF IMMENSE POWER

HILARY Mantel says she felt the evil seeping into her bones as she wrote Bring Up The Bodies, whose title comes from the order given out at the Tower of London when prisoners were brought for trial.

It is a tribute to her genius that the reader senses it, too, gripped by the horror lurking behind the sophisticated, civilised facade of Henry VIII and his terrifying court.

She captures both Henry’s ruthlessness and his quixotic kindness, his childishness and his ego.

Most of all, in this masterful retelling of how he fell out of love with the most famous of his six wives, she lays out with dreadful precision how each step was plotted to lead, inescapably, to Anne Boleyn’s beheading, with an especially sharp sword, by a French executioner from Calais.

Like so many absolute rulers, Henry relied upon others to sort out the more unpleasant difficulties.

In the King’s chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, Mantel brilliantly evokes a man of towering intellect and personality so compelling that, even as he orders the torture of an unfortunate young courtier whose confession is crucial to prove Anne’s guilt, we find ourselves helplessly in thrall to him.

Winning the Man Booker twice is a worthy accolade for Mantel because while Wolf Hall – the first in her Tudor trilogy, which won the prize in 2009 – was outstanding, its sequel is even better.

Bring Up The Bodies is simply exceptional, a book of immense power that sweeps you effortlessly into a world you thought was familiar, but come to realise you barely knew until now.

I envy anyone who hasn’t yet read it. For those of us who have, the third part of her trilogy can’t come quickly enough.

I can’t think of a better book – for once, the Man Booker judges have chosen not just well, but perfectly.