"Since the sixteenth century we have been fascinated by Henry VIII and the man who stood beside him, guiding him, enriching him, and enduring the king’s insatiable appetites and violent outbursts until Hnry ordered his beheading in July 1540. After a decade of sleuthing in the royal archives, Diarmaid MacCulloch has emerged with a tantalizing new understanding of Henry’s mercurial chief minister, the inscrutable and utterly compelling Thomas Cromwell"--