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Damian Lewis fans line up for Wolf Hall tonight

990 replies

Travelledtheworld · 21/01/2015 11:29

Wednesday 21st January BBC2 Channel 4

lush costumes.

www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/11358197/Damian-Lewiss-inspiration-for-Wolf-Halls-Henry-VIII-Wills-and-Harry.html

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BOFster · 06/02/2015 13:52

Ecclestone is a bit cadaverous to play Cromwell though, I think. Going from the Holbein portrait, I'd have cast Ken Stott. He's actually pretty good at going from amiable to menacing, judging from his turn in The Missing.

MuddhaOfSuburbia · 06/02/2015 13:56

Pffft. He has the Look about him. Could fatten up a bit I could help

And MR would make a SMASHING Thomas More

squoosh · 06/02/2015 14:01

I stood beside Ken Stott in the pub once, he was Polly Pocket sized.

BOFster · 06/02/2015 14:06

Really? Grin

MuddhaOfSuburbia · 06/02/2015 14:07

squoosh wasn't it you who was stood behind Myleene Klass' ex at the airport on another thread?

Grin

I think you need your own Celebrities I've Stood Beside/Behind/In Front Of thread

JeanneDeMontbaston · 06/02/2015 14:08

No. I like Eccleston, but just, absolutely not.

Btw, I am getting to the end of it, and wow, that last scene where he's standing on the wharf watching Anne in the boat, those are is quite some shonky visuals. It looks like a 1980s low-budget painted backdrop.

squoosh · 06/02/2015 14:09

Yes it was! He was bitching about Myleene and his girlfriend was wearing quite a bored expression Grin

I've stood beside some of the greats in my time, Myleene's ex, little Ken, Ronan Keating.........

squoosh · 06/02/2015 14:12

Greg Wise is tall, I lurked by his side once.

MuddhaOfSuburbia · 06/02/2015 14:16

Hummmf

I've been in London thirty years and never stood next to any celebrities

I did live in the flat above Tommy Cockles. But it was after he'd moved out

Justforblogprofileadmin · 06/02/2015 14:17

I really like the choice of Mark Rylance. I've admired him ever since I saw him in a TV play in which he played a homeless alcoholic. I think it was called The Grass Arena. That was such a compelling performance that I still feel sick with misery when I think about it.

He looks sad as Cromwell, too, which seems right. He also looks more tentative than I pictured Cromwell in the books, but I suppose that is right, too. What Cromwell is doing is so daring and uncertain of success.

JeanneDeMontbaston · 06/02/2015 14:19

BOF, if you still want to know about English Bibles and the bloke who got burnt, I can bend your ear? If not, skip this.

In the late fourteenth century, an Oxford don called Wycliffe and his mates started translating the Bible into English. They also started questioning some of the Church's teachings, and they got a big following (including amongst people who probably weren't that educated and were more the 'fuck authority! power to the people!' types). Amongst other things, they argued everyone could be his or her own priest, that priests should marry, that the Eucharist was just bread not the body of Christ, and that women should be allowed to be priests.

It all got terribly mixed up with political sedition.

In 1407-8, the Archbishop of Canterbury and his cronies decided enough was enough, and they banned English translations of the Bible made after a certain date - technically, you could own a Wycliffite English Bible, but you needed a licence for it. About the only person we know who bothered to apply for one of these was a woman. But plenty of important people - King Henry VI, various monasteries - kept copies anyway, because no one was really that fussed about rich/important people reading the Bible in English. They just didn't want it to be used to stir up ordinary folk.

This law, the one banning the Bible, also said heretics could be burned at the stake. I think it will be under this law that the bloke in Wolf Hall was burned.

Despite the law, there are shitloads of Wycliffe's English Bibles made - far more survive than any other Middle English book, which, when you think lots must have been destroyed, is pretty amazing. There are shedloads more of them than Tyndale's translation. Mantel does glancingly mention this - she talks about the types of families who'd have kept a Wycliffite Bible through the generations, before Tyndale came into business.

magimedi · 06/02/2015 15:46

When the first person mentioned Ecclestone I immediately thought of Bernie Ecclestone {grin}

But he is pretty scheming & Machiavellian isn't he?

Quenelle · 06/02/2015 15:50

Indeed Grin! And he's got the hairdo for it too.

JeanneDeMontbaston · 06/02/2015 15:52

Grin I love the image I've got in my head now.

squoosh · 06/02/2015 15:54

Bernie could play horrible old Sir Richard Rich.

Damian Lewis fans line up for Wolf Hall tonight
florentina1 · 06/02/2015 15:58

So agree that the audible version is brilliant. Some of the best narration I have Heard in ages

KatieScarlettreregged · 06/02/2015 16:57

Wolf Hall - narrated by Simon Slater
BUTB - Simon Vance
Both are fantastic. However, in one of them you do get a shock when you hear "Green Grows Holly" in the middle of a chapter accompanied by what sounds like a lute. Quite disconcerting Smile

BOFster · 06/02/2015 17:09

That explains a lot, Jeanne, thanks. I watched the Melvyn Bragg documentary about William Tyndale's bible too last night. Really interesting.

Thedonkeyontherainbowsaidwoof · 06/02/2015 17:09

I have a couple of questions for those who've read the books/more observant viewers.

A) What is going on between Cromwell and Jane Seymour? Why did he send her the book of needle patterns? Is he trying to get her on side politically, is it a type of fatherly affection, or does he fancy her?

B) Who was the chap who threatened Cromwell for sending letters in the latest episode, when they were in the church following Anne's coronation? The one where Cromwell told him not to threaten him (not the similar scene with Moore when they were discussing threats)

JeanneDeMontbaston · 06/02/2015 17:14

Ooh, I'll watch that. I know very little about Tyndale, just enough to piss off the early modernists. Smile

I am getting a bit sick of the 'young women flock around 40-something bloke' thing, thedonkey. That doesn't answer your question but I'm not sure the books do either TBH.

Mind you, that's probably totally inconsistent, since quite a lot of us fancy him.

I liked the bit where he told her that her 'modest' look could take her anywhere, and then it looked to me as if something in her face made him think 'shit, she really could go anywhere'. Not so meek after all ...

Justforblogprofileadmin · 06/02/2015 17:30

The books are quite resolutely vague on some points, and I'm not sure if it is ever made completely clear whether Cromwell is thinking of Jane Seymour as a possible wife for himself in the earlier stages of his acquaintance with her.

Sometimes I wondered if Mantel was playing around a little bit with an idea of indeterminacy. If history is regarded simply as a record of events that are construed entirely independently from our narration of them, then there is no such thing as indeterminacy it is either determinately the case that Cromwell wanted Seymour for a wife or determinately the case that he didn't. But Mantel is so preoccupied with ideas of obscurity and gaps in the record, and so interestingly on the borderland of fiction and narrative history that perhaps there is theme in the books of facts that are not known being somehow unformed, or not fully formed like a tree in the forest not making a sound if no-one is there to hear it.

I dunno. I'm always trying to come up with elaborate theories about why the words of such a careful and craftful writer are in some ways to hard to follow!

squoosh · 06/02/2015 17:34

'B) Who was the chap who threatened Cromwell for sending letters in the latest episode, when they were in the church following Anne's coronation? The one where Cromwell told him not to threaten him (not the similar scene with Moore when they were discussing threats)'

I think it was Brereton and I think that young popinjay needs to watch out.

Baddz · 06/02/2015 17:43

A) when I read the book - a while ago - I got the impression that TC was interested in JS as a possible wife. Her family situation at the time meant that her family would have probably accepted him as a suitor. (Her father slept with his sons wife) it was a huge scandal at court. I also got the impression from the book that JS welcomed TCs attentions. MB just wanted to get away from her awful family I think. Any port in a storm etc.
B) it was William brereton. Not a nice chap!

TheVestalVirgin · 06/02/2015 18:02

It was my impression from the book that Cromwell was attracted to Mary Boleyn but that it was Jane Seymour who tugged at his heart strings. I think he felt sorry for her plus she would have been an excellent match for him. A few years earlier he couldn't have hoped to marry a Seymour woman. But with their present scandal and his rise in Henry's favour, Cromwell realised he could marry up.

I think it was par for the course that any wealthy man with a position at court would have been the focus for flirting regardless of his age. After all the young women were at court primarily to snaffle a suitable husband.

TheVestalVirgin · 06/02/2015 18:09

I agree with you baddz I think Mary Boleyn was just desperate for a husband to protect her and provide for her. She was a widow who had let herself be used then cast off by the King. She had lost all her currency in the marriage market as far as her family were concerned. No wonder she was throwing herself at Cromwell.

In the end she stepped outside her own social class and married William Stafford I think?