Bring Up the Bodies
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Ben Miles
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By:
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Hilary Mantel
About this listen
2012 Washington Post Best Books of the Year
2012 Cleveland Plain Dealer's Best Books of the Year
2012 NPR Best Book of the Year
2012 Publishers Weekly Best Books of the Year
2012 USA Today Best Books of the Year
2012 New Yorker Best Books of the Year
2012 Entertainment Weekly Best Books of the Year
2013 Women's Prize for Fiction - Shortlist
2012 Costa Book Award - Winner
2012 New York Times Book Review Notable Books of the Year
2012 Man Booker Award - Winner
2012 Time Magazine Top 10 Books of the Year
2012 The Independent (UK) Best Books of the Year
2013 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction Shortlist
2012 Kirkus Reviews Best Books of the Year
2013 Audie Award Winner
2012 Time Magazine Best Books of the Year
This program is read by Ben Miles, who played Thomas Cromwell in the Royal Shakespeare Company adaptation of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies.
Winner of the 2012 Man Booker Prize
The sequel to Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel's 2009 Man Booker Prize winner and New York Times best seller, Bring Up the Bodies delves into the heart of Tudor history with the downfall of Anne Boleyn.
Though he battled for seven years to marry her, Henry is disenchanted with Anne Boleyn. She has failed to give him a son, and her sharp intelligence and audacious will alienate his old friends and the noble families of England. When the discarded Katherine dies in exile from the court, Anne stands starkly exposed, the focus of gossip and malice.
At a word from Henry, Thomas Cromwell is ready to bring her down. Over three terrifying weeks, Anne is ensnared in a web of conspiracy, while the demure Jane Seymour stands waiting her turn for the poisoned wedding ring. But Anne and her powerful family will not yield without a ferocious struggle. Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies follows the dramatic trial of the queen and her suitors for adultery and treason. To defeat the Boleyns, Cromwell must ally with his natural enemies, the papist aristocracy. What price will he pay for Anne's head?
Bring Up the Bodies is one of The New York Times' 10 Best Books of 2012, one of Publishers Weekly's Top 10 Best Books of 2012, and one of The Washington Post's 10 Best Books of 2012.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
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By: Lynn Cullen
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The Crown
- By: Nancy Bilyeau
- Narrated by: Nicola Barber
- Length: 14 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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In this debut historical thriller, an aristocratic young nun must find a legendary crown in order to save her father’s life and preserve all she holds dear. When novitiate nun Joanna Stafford learns her rebel cousin is condemned by King Henry VIII to be burned at the stake, she makes the decision to break the sacred rule of enclosure and flee her Dominican order in Dartford to stand at her cousin’s side. Arrested for interfering with king’s justice, Joanna, along with her father, Sir Richard Stafford, is sent to the Tower of London.
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Torture
- By S. Wells on 03-24-13
By: Nancy Bilyeau
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The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn
- By: Robin Maxwell
- Narrated by: Suzan Crowley
- Length: 13 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Robin Maxwell’s debut novel introduces Anne Boleyn and her daughter, Elizabeth: one was queen for a thousand days, the other for more than 40 years. Both were passionate, headstrong women, loved and hated by Henry VIII. At the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign, her mother’s private diary is given to her by a mysterious lady. In reading it, the young ruler - herself embroiled in a dangerous love affair - discovers a great deal about her much maligned mother.
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One of the Best Tudor Novels Availalbe
- By Bonnie-Ann on 03-02-13
By: Robin Maxwell
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In the Name of the Family
- A Novel
- By: Sarah Dunant
- Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton
- Length: 14 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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It is 1502, and Rodrigo Borgia, a self-confessed womanizer and master of political corruption, is now on the papal throne as Alexander VI. His daughter Lucrezia, age 22 - already three times married and a pawn in her father's plans - is discovering her own power. And then there is his son Cesare Borgia, brilliant, ruthless, and increasingly unstable; it is his relationship with Machiavelli that gives the Florentine diplomat a master class in the dark arts of power and politics.
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One of the best historical fiction novels
- By GrandmaNurseHeather on 04-13-17
By: Sarah Dunant
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Empress
- Godspeaker, Book 1
- By: Karen Miller
- Narrated by: Josephine Bailey
- Length: 20 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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In a family torn apart by poverty and violence, Hekat is no more than an unwanted mouth to feed, worth only a few coins from a passing slave trader. But Hekat was not born to be a slave. For her, a different path has been chosen. It is a path that will take her from stinking back alleys to the house of her God, from blood-drenched battlefields to the glittering palaces of Mijak. This is the story of Hekat, slave to no man.
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depressing and left me feeling empty
- By Bonnie on 09-16-09
By: Karen Miller
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The Boleyn King
- Boleyn Trilogy, Book 1
- By: Laura Andersen
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Just seventeen years old, Henry IX, known as William, is a king bound by the restraints of the regency yet anxious to prove himself. With the French threatening battle and the Catholics sowing the seeds of rebellion at home, William trusts only three people: his older sister Elizabeth; his best friend and loyal counselor, Dominic; and Minuette, a young orphan raised as a royal ward by William’s mother, Anne Boleyn.
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Great idea, bad story
- By S. D. Ristick on 09-22-14
By: Laura Andersen
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First of the Tudors
- By: Joanna Hickson
- Narrated by: Tom Clegg, Non Haf
- Length: 14 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Jasper Tudor, son of Queen Catherine and her second husband, Owen Tudor, has grown up far from the intrigue of the royal court. But after he and his brother Edmund are summoned to London, their half brother, King Henry VI, takes a keen interest in their future. Bestowing earldoms on them both, Henry also gives them the wardship of the young heiress Margaret Beaufort. Although she is still a child, Jasper becomes devoted to her and is devastated when Henry arranges her betrothal to Edmund.
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War of the Roses, Again
- By Laurel on 03-27-17
By: Joanna Hickson
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Green Darkness
- By: Anya Seton
- Narrated by: Heather Wilds
- Length: 23 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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The marriage of the Englishman Richard Marsdon and his young American wife, Celia, slowly turns tragic as Richard withdraws into himself and Celia suffers a debilitating emotional breakdown. A wise mystic realizes that Celia can escape her past only by reliving it. She journeys back four hundred years to her former life as the servant girl Celia de Bohun during the reign of Edward VI - and to her doomed love affair with the chaplain Stephen Marsdon.
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A different narrator would have made all the difference.
- By J on 06-04-15
By: Anya Seton
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A Dangerous Inheritance
- By: Alison Weir
- Narrated by: Maggie Mash
- Length: 25 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Historian and New York Times best-selling author Alison Weir is acclaimed for her absorbing works about the infamous House of York and House of Tudor lines. In A Dangerous Inheritance, Weir uses her wealth of knowledge to craft a compelling novel about two women, living 70 years apart, who are linked through the mysterious disappearance of King Richard III's nephews, Edward V and Richard of Shrewsbury - also known as the Princes in the Tower.
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Not Weir's Best
- By Joshua on 01-08-13
By: Alison Weir
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Katherine
- A Novel
- By: Anya Seton
- Narrated by: Lorna Bennett
- Length: 29 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Set in the vibrant fourteenth century of Chaucer and the Black Death, the story features knights fighting in battle, serfs struggling in poverty, and the magnificent Plantagenets—Edward III, the Black Prince, and Richard II—who rule despotically over a court rotten with intrigue. Within this era of danger and romance, John of Gaunt, the king’s son, falls passionately in love with the already-married Katherine. Their affair persists through decades of war, adultery, murder, loneliness, and redemption.
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my favorite novel brought to life
- By Heather on 10-04-23
By: Anya Seton
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The Confessions of Catherine de Medici
- A Novel
- By: C. W. Gortner
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 15 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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In this brilliantly imagined novel, acclaimed author C. W. Gortner brings Catherine to life in her own voice, allowing us to enter the intimate world of a woman whose determination to protect her family’s throne and realm plunged her into a lethal struggle for power. From the fairy-tale chateaux of the Loire Valley to the battlefields of the wars of religion to the mob-filled streets of Paris, this is the extraordinary untold journey of one of the most maligned and misunderstood women ever to be queen.
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Pretty good but historical details are terrible
- By Kindle Customer on 07-10-11
By: C. W. Gortner
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The Iron King
- The Accursed Kings, Book 1
- By: Maurice Druon
- Narrated by: Peter Joyce
- Length: 11 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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From the publishers that brought you A Game of Thrones comes the series that inspired George R.R. Martin’s epic work. France became a great nation under Philip the Fair - but it was a greatness achieved at the expense of her people, for his was a reign characterised by violence, the scandalous adulteries of his daughters-in-law, and the triumph of royal authority.
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Historical Goodie
- By Syd Young on 08-03-13
By: Maurice Druon
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narration is very well done & book is quite good
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A Manual for Cleaning Women
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A Manual for Cleaning Women compiles the best work of the legendary short-story writer Lucia Berlin. With the grit of Raymond Carver, the humor of Grace Paley, and a blend of wit and melancholy all her own, Berlin crafts miracles from the everyday, uncovering moments of grace in the laundromats and halfway houses of the American Southwest, in the homes of the Bay Area upper class, among switchboard operators and struggling mothers, hitchhikers, and bad Christians.
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Exquisite writing, lopsided performances
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Detransition, Baby
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Reese almost had it all: a loving relationship with Amy, an apartment in New York City, a job she didn't hate. She had scraped together what previous generations of trans women could only dream of: a life of mundane, bourgeois comforts. The only thing missing was a child. But then her girlfriend, Amy, detransitioned and became Ames, and everything fell apart. Now Reese is caught in a self-destructive pattern: avoiding her loneliness by sleeping with married men.
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Emotional Torture
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The Giant, O'Brien
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London, 1782: center of science and commerce, home to the newly rich and the desperately poor. In the midst of it all is the Giant, O'Brien, a freak of nature, a man of song and story who trusts in myths, fairies, miracles, and little people. He has come from Ireland to exhibit his size for money. O'Brien's opposite is a man of science, the famed anatomist John Hunter, who lusts after the Giant's corpse as a medical curiosity, a boon to the advancement of scientific knowledge.
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Brilliant, terrifying, relevant
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What listeners say about Bring Up the Bodies
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Emily elegado
- 12-13-23
Why did I go so long without this..?
I didn’t realize there was anything to follow Wolf Hall.. the ending always seemed premature. Imagine my excitement when I saw this pop up on my fyp! Great book, fantastic read.
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- Edward S. Gardner
- 08-24-21
very well done
loved it, hard to understand the King's role in this. also Cromwell's of course.
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- Elizabeth
- 12-04-23
Excellent continuation.
This is a well told tale, the narrator being excellent. It’s an interesting and entertaining read.
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- Claudia A. Pruitt
- 11-04-22
Riveting!
This series is truly riveting. I feel as of I am on the rooms and locations listening witnessing their conversations, being privy to their thoughts - totally engrossed. The narrator is exceptional. The emotions in his reading are so vivid it is like watching a play.
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- Cindy Mercer
- 03-28-23
Excellent read AND listen
By the time you get to the 2nd book, Bring Up The Bodies, you know the characters well and they develop throughout the story. I love this reader and highly recommend the series.
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- Ann M Toebbe
- 12-01-22
Ravishing writing, spellbinding performance.
Like Wolf Hall, the writing is nothing short of miraculous in its precision, immediacy, lyricism and insight. And the performance is so good you want it to last forever.
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- mnichols
- 02-14-23
Just incredible.
I can’t seem to stop listening. The narration is excellent and the story is utterly hypnotic.
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- Chris
- 10-09-23
Just exceptional
After wolf hall I couldn’t imagine how the series would get better, but it does. The pros and the dialogue of this book are exceptional.
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- Jefferson
- 08-01-22
Fascinating, Suspenseful, & Beautiful, but Tawdry
Hillary Mantel’s Bring up the Bodies (2012) starts just after Wolf Hall (2009) ends. Thomas More has been executed, Henry has been divorced from Katherine and married to Anne Boleyn for three years, but they only have one child, Elizabeth, and the aging Henry is falling in love with Jane Seymour, the quiet, shy antidote to proud, prickly Anne. The royal progress of the King and his servants, hangers on, and friends has reached Wolf Hall, home of the Seymours, with whom they hunt, hawk, talk, and eat and drink. One young lord, Weston, is with stunning stupidity openly insulting to Thomas Cromwell.
Cromwell at fifty is working indefatigably for Henry and England as Master Secretary, Master of the Rolls, Chancellor of Cambridge University, and has his hand in everything else, displaying all of his many talents and qualities: wit, tact, patience, memory, strategy, secrecy, poker face, ruthlessness, sympathy for the poor, and love for his family. He’ll one moment hire into his house a toothless vagabond who claims he was a jester for a lord who got blown up and the next moment tell a ward that when diplomacy fails, you’d better get your axe out while your enemy is still abed. It has been rumored that he was interested in remarrying to Jane Seymour, but as he observes his king falling in love with her, he morphs into a Pandarus-Machiavelli. He, Cromwell, is not without axes to grind for anyone guilty of cruel and callous treatment to his revered former master Cardinal Wolsey when he fell from favor. Cromwell indeed has a long and perfect memory. During high stakes discussions and decisions involving the Holy Roman Emperor, the Pope, the King of France, Henry’s daughter by Katherine Mary, the supposed lovers of Anne Boleyn, and so on, he, Cromwell, often departs the present to revisit the past about things like his beloved deceased wife and daughters, his violent father, his first and last foray into a military career, and his start in the world of Italian banking.
Hillary Mantel works into her narrative many details on the international and national historical and cultural situations: Henry feeling insecure on his throne because of lurking Plantagenents and hostile Pope and Emperor; Cromwell working on ways to transfer the money and power of the monasteries to the crown; Moscovites invading Poland (!); etc. Also, plenty of historical details about life in 16th-century England and Europe: festivals, foods, religion, books, monasteries, jousting, clothes, etc. Plenty of themes about life and death and gender, too. And she writes splendid prose:
“Just in time to frown at this, Sir Nicholas Carew has made an entrance. He does not come into a room like lesser men, but rolls in like a siege engine or some formidable hurling device, and now halting before Cromwell, he looks as if he wishes to bombard him.”
“A statute is written to entrap meaning, a poem to escape it. A quill sharpened can stir and rustle like the pinions of angels.”
“If dogs could smell out treason, Rich would be a blood hound, that prince among trufflers.”
“You should not desire, he knows, the death of any human creature. Death is your prince, you are not his patron. When you think he is engaged elsewhere, he will batter down your door, walk in and wipe his boots on you.”
“He takes the child to a looking glass so she can see her wings. Her steps are tentative, she is in awe at herself. Mirrored, the peacock eyes speak to him. Do not forget us. As the year turns, we are here: a whisper, a touch, a feather’s breath from you.”
“These days are perfect. The clear untroubled light picks out each berry shimmering in a hedge. Each leaf of a tree, the sun behind it, hangs like a golden pear.”
“The things you think are the disasters in your life are not the disasters really. Almost anything can be turned around. Out of every ditch, a path, if you can only see it.”
Mantel’s narrative techniques are noteworthy. As in Wolf Hall, she frequently refers to Cromwell by he and his name, e.g., “he, Cromwell, says.” Why? She could just write, “Cromwell says.” The many “he, Cromwell” phrases add weight to his, Cromwell’s, personality. They become hypnotic. Mantel’s narrator is also given to addressing “you” (e.g., “The boom of the cannon catches them unawares, shuddering across the water. You feel the jolt inside, in your bones”) and recruiting the reader with a “we” (e.g., “We are coming to the sweet season of the year, when the air is mild and the leaves pale and lemon cakes are flavored with lavender, egg custards barely set, infused with a sprig of basil, elderflowers simmered in a sugar syrup and poured over halved strawberries”) These touches accompany her present tense narration. Usually, I loathe the trendy present tense in novels, especially historical fiction, but Mantel is such a fine writer of such pristine prose, that I liked it.
The book is an absorbing series of vivid, intense, high stakes scenes. Even if you know the history (Henry working through a series of hapless wives in his quest for novelty, variety, and sons), Mantel makes it page turning through her beautiful and potent style, her witty dialogue, her sense of time and place. Like the best historical fiction, it is utterly convincing and immersive, exotic and human.
Audiobook reader Ben Miles is great: terse, dry, witty, intelligent; rough for Cromwell; wannabe French for Anne; petulant or naïve for Henry; salty and foul for Norfolk; toothless and savory for ex-jester Anthony; all voices just right, whether young or old, British or foreign, male or female, etc., and no straining for effect.
However, despite Mantel’s wonderful writing and absorbing story and Mile’s great reading of it, it started making me feel dirty. After Cromwell playing Cupid if not Pandarus for Henry vis-a-vis Jane, he starts digging up (or manufacturing) dirt on Anne Boleyn by interrogating her ladies in waiting and a musician/singer. All because Henry has gotten a taste for divorce. It’s tawdry.
Of course, it’s also history, and I am looking forward to the third book in the trilogy to see how Cromwell ends up. He is a complicated and compelling character: brilliant, capable, unflappable, witty, cultured, international, sympathetic (to the poor and the underdog), loyal (to the king and England), strategizing a step ahead of everyone else and always remaining his secret self. Not above taking bribes or threatening or tempting foolish and vulnerable people to gain his objectives. Is he TOO good to be true? Maybe his luck will run out or his knack decline. He will deserve what fate he receives.
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- Dalton Knisley
- 02-15-23
Great read!
I enjoyed getting to read this fabulous book! Lots of great information and starting points to dig in a bit deeper.
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