(dramatic music) - The books are about the rise of Thomas Cromwell.
The great beginning sentence of the book, I think, are the words "get up."
- Now get up.
Get up!
- And that's being spoken by Cromwell's father, a blacksmith in Putney.
It's a story of one of these remarkable people who suffers enormous hardship in his life and doesn't grow up blaming anyone else for anything bad that happens to him, he just gets up.
- Where you been?
- Here and there.
- Working for Wolsey now I hear?
- I'm a lawyer.
- You were always a talker.
Slap in the mouth couldn't cure you.
- God knows you tried.
- He's a very layered man, he's a man with an enigmatic, mysterious background.
- Where did you learn this?
- At the docks, a little after I left home.
Earned a living from it for a while.
Everyone thought they could beat a child.
- What else should I know about you?
- I heard he killed a man abroad and never made confession.
- To make a living he became a soldier, and moved into the supply lines, and then into the Florentine banks.
I think he wants to know more than anyone else in the room about the situation.
He's a great lover of knowledge.
- I hardly know where I come from myself.
If you want to speak half-secretly, try Greek.
- We know you're a Lutheran.
- Me?
No, sir.
I'm a banker.
I like his wit, that he doesn't take things personally, because he had no security.
He had no family, no foundation, nothing to come back on.
I think he was a very, very careful person.
As long as the king holds by the present queen, I will hold by her, too.
- I trust in your discretion and your skill.
- There's a remarkably powerful sequence that has to do with his wife and children.
What that does is show a whole dimension to Thomas Cromwell that has never been seen before.
- His heart turns to stone.
Some part of him dies at that moment.
- So as you follow him through the rest of the story, you feel for him.
I think that grounds this character and makes him a man that we can all relate to.
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