The fate of peoples is made like this, two men in small rooms. Forget the coronations, the conclaves of cardinals, the pomp and processions. This is how the world changes: a counter pushed across a table, a pen stroke that alters the force of a phrase, a woman's sigh as she passes and leaves on the air a trail of orange flower or rose water; her hand pulling close the bed curtain, the discreet sigh of flesh against flesh.

For what's the point of breeding children, if each generation does not improve on what went before.

God takes out your heart of flesh, and gives you a heart of stone.

You're only young once, they say, but doesn't it go on for a long time? More years than you can bear.

My concern is less the monarchy as such than the attempt of a fading colonial power to hang onto grandeur.

I think it took me half a page of 'Wolf Hall' to think: 'This is the novel I should have been writing all along.'

One of the frustrations of someone like Thomas Cromwell is that, before they step into the light of history, and become extremely well documented, they are not known. A king might be well documented but not everyone.