HENRY WITH A VERY DARK HEART

WE’VE seen Henry VIII played by the greatest actors of the past 50 years. In the Sixties, Robert Shaw and Richard Burton portrayed him as a titan, more demigod than human, in A Man For All Seasons and Anne Of The Thousand Days respectively. Australian actor Keith Michell won acclaim in the first major TV version, Henry VIII And His Six Wives, in 1972. And in the 21st century, Jonathan Rhys Meyers portrayed the king in a very different light — sexually voracious, lean and lusty, ruling an x-rated court in The Tudors. Now, Damian Lewis is unlike any other. He is athletic, the youthful Henry before his weight ballooned, but also a powerful, imposing personality. When he speaks, he leans in to people and snarls quietly . . . like a wolf. As viewers become absorbed in the first episode next Wednesday, they will realise all the earlier versions had something missing: what Mantel calls ‘a moving area of darkness at the core of the story’. That darkness hides the king’s brilliant, ruthless adviser, Thomas Cromwell. Son of a Putney blacksmith, Cromwell served as a mercenary before becoming a lawyer, then the right-hand man of Cardinal Wolsey, the most powerful man in England after Henry himself. But he was a man who lived in the shadows. Just one portrait of him is known to exist, by Hans Holbein — Cromwell said it made him look like a murderer. By watching through Cromwell’s eyes as the king struggles to divorce his first wife, and to marry and then discard his second, we are placed at the heart of the political action. Like Cromwell, we are able to understand the motives and the weaknesses of all of the main characters.