Entertainment

Mantel conjures the world under the reign of Henry VIII and delivers Thomas Cromwell, in all of his complexity, to us as a sort of gift that keeps giving. If we can understand Cromwell, then maybe we can learn to understand ourselves.

G.K. Chesterton’s Heretics and Orthodoxy is two books, two collections of essays, in one volume, containing some of the most powerful thinking that the world has ever seen. Chesterton is often categorized as a “Catholic” writer but that is a shallow assessment. From Dickens to Whistler, Chesterton lambasts the great thinkers of his time and in some cases makes mincemeat of notable writers including, but not limited to, Robert Browning, Rudyard Kipling H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw.