Alison Weir's The Cardinal presents the public and secret lives of Tudor statesman Thomas Wolsey

Born an innkeeper’s son, Thomas Wolsey rose spectacularly to become a Catholic cardinal and Henry VIII’s principal advisor. Weir’s (The Passionate Tudor, 2024) newest biographical novel departs from royal protagonists to present an intimate, adroitly multifaceted portrait of the man (here called Tom) who devoted his career to serving Henry’s interests but whose failure to engineer the annulment of Henry’s first marriage caused his disgrace.

Reliably meticulous, Weir takes readers through Tom’s growing influence, showing how his ambitions led him to the priesthood and how his acumen with foreign policy made him indispensable to Henry while igniting the nobility’s resentment. She dexterously interweaves the political and personal, like Tom’s love for his mistress Joan Larke, which he hates keeping secret, and his close, paternal friendship with Henry.

Through Weir’s controlled storytelling, readers’ sympathy for Tom fluctuates throughout; one admires his administrative brilliance while cringing at his astonishing accumulation of riches, which he feels he deserves. Weir plows familiar ground with Henry’s divorce from Katherine of Aragon, but seeing it from Tom’s viewpoint provides additional insights.

The Cardinal is published today by Ballantine in the US; Headline Review is the UK publisher.  I wrote this review for the May 1 issue of Booklist. 

Read more about the background to the novel on the author's website. There will be a related ebook, a short story called The Cardinal's Daughter, out for UK-only release on October 23. According to details posted to her page, Weir explains her publisher's reasoning for not offering her e-shorts for sale on Amazon.com directly. The earlier e-shorts published alongside her Six Tudor Queens novels can be purchased as a full-length book, In the Shadow of Queens, from UK retailers.