Publisher's Weekly Review
According to Ackroyd (Blake; Hawksmoor), More "embodied the old order of hierarchy and authority at the very moment when it began to collapse all around him." Symbolizing that collapse was Henry VIII's defiance of the pope in the "great matter" of his much-desired divorce of Catherine of Aragon. Refusing to compromise with the break from Rome, More willed his own death. He dies well in Ackroyd's narrative, but he does not live a life as saintly as he leaves it, piously amassing wealth and power, piously writing philosophical works as ambiguous as Utopia and as scatological as Responsio, piously harassing religious reformers and smugly condemning them to the stake. As a biographer of More (the first since 1984), Ackroyd is also an effective novelist. He evokes late-medieval London in sight and in smell; sends More on his workaholic schedule of legal, political, diplomatic and courtly activities; exploits familial and hagiographic anecdotes for their story values; and repeats unscholarly untruths (as Luther's cloacal epiphanies) because fiction can be more colorful than fact. Only Henry VIII in Ackroyd's large cast fails to be realized in the round, but the king, recognizing More's loyal services, does "graciously" reduce his sentence from disemboweling to beheading. After an awkward, conditional start ("But it might be more fruitful to recognise... "/ "...but it might be worth rehearsing certain of its aspects... "/ "It has in the past been noticed... "), Ackroyd's clotted language metamorphoses into elegant English, and the nobility of More's demise will move readers who persist to the end. 27 b&w illustrations not seen by PW. BOMC, History Book Club and QPB selections. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
A vividly evocative portrait of the lawyer and statesman who was ``the King's good servant, but God's first,'' from award- winning biographer and novelist Ackroyd (Blake, 1996; T.S. Eliot, 1984; etc.) Thomas More was born in 1479 in Milk Street, in what is now the center of Londons financial district, to Agnes and John More, a tradesman-turned-lawyer. Thomas would be one of the great intellects of his time, and Ackroyd gives particular attention to young More's rare and prolonged education: his apprenticeship at the court of the learned Archbishop and Chancellor John Morton of Canterbury, his grounding in the liberal arts at Oxford University, and his legal education at New Inn and Lincoln's Inn. More's upbringing and education, Ackroyd shows, left their permanent imprint upon him: His extensive training in dialectical logic served him well at the bar and on the bench, his time with Archbishop Morton made him familiar with the world of prelates and statecraft, and his Latin and literary training fitted him for his career as a humanist. Ackroyd vibrantly evokes the devout London in which More lived, where even successful lawyers meditated on life's transience and participated in endless rounds of prayer and ritual. He also gives an intimate picture of More's affectionate relations with his family and tells the familiar story of More's rise to favor in the court of Henry VIII, his friendship with Erasmus, his tenure as lord chancellor, and his fall from grace as the crisis of the king's divorce of Catherine of Aragon worsened. Ultimately, More's constancy to his church outweighed his obeisance to the king: Ackroyd gives what amounts to a transcript of the trial in which More refused to endorse Henry's marriage to Anne Boleyn, and narrates his imprisonment in the Tower of London and execution in 1535. A limpidly written and superbly wrought portrait of a complex hero who was truly, as his friend Erasmus stated, ``omnium horarum homo''a ``man for all seasons.'' (8 pages color, 8 pages black-and-white illustrations) (Book-of-the-Month Club/Quality Paperback Book Club/ History Book Club selection)
Booklist Review
The Catholic Church made Thomas More a saint. Ackroyd makes him a man--with all the paradoxes, ironies, and complexities that mortality entails. Not that he impugns More's faith. Far from it. By showing that More was no angel but fully human--tempted by sexual pleasure, amused by earthy jests, moved by political ambitions, and prey to common fears--Ackroyd makes the miracle of More's martyrdom all the more incandescent. Ackroyd unfolds the fabric of More's life, from baptism to beheading, as a Renaissance tapestry, richly colored, intricately woven. First, we see the strictly hierarchal London society into which More was born, close enough to the seats of power to hope for high appointment yet not wholly separated from the thieves, charlatans, and whores he came to know well through his work with the sheriff's court. Nearer the center of the tapestry we see the humanist scholar Erasmus, with whom More shared an enthusiasm for the New Learning; the Protestant iconoclast Martin Luther, against whom More hurled the fiercest invectives; the comic dramatist John Heywood, in whose facetious mirth More delighted; the adroit Cardinal Wolsey, whose fall from grace brought More to office as the lord chancellor; and, finally, the imperious monarch Henry VIII, to whom More pledged everything--except his soul. And it is between Henry and More that Ackroyd slowly tightens the threads of an unequal tug-of-war, as Henry demands and More refuses to give complete submission to the king as the head of a new national church that will grant an expedient divorce. In the harrowing denouement in which More kisses and blesses his executioner, even the jaded cynic will glimpse something rare. An indispensable acquisition for any library. (Reviewed October 1, 1998)0385477090Bryce Christensen
Choice Review
Written by a distinguished novelist, this book was a bestseller in Britain--and it is easy to see why. Ackroyd possesses a lapidary style and renders the religious and psychological landscape of late medieval England with sensitivity and deftness. Sensitive too is his limning of character. More was an odd amalgam of rationalism and religiosity, a Lord Chancellor who wore a hair shirt under his chain of office, a man whose "scruple of his conscience" was inextricably linked to his vision of a united Christian commonwealth under the church's leadership. More was willing to give up his life when Henry VIII's breach with the papacy, carried out to secure his divorce from Katharine of Aragon and legitimize his marriage to Anne Boleyn, threatened this ideal. Perhaps because he is an ironist himself, Ackroyd seems deaf to the cruelty in More's celebrated wit, the "taunting and mocking" that his contemporary Edward Hall deplored. And while More the humanist and martyr are on display in this work, More the fanatical persecutor of heretics receives little comment. For a balanced view of More, readers may turn to Richard Marius's Thomas More (CH, Feb'85). General readers. D. R. Bisson; Belmont University
Library Journal Review
Prizewinning biographer/novelist Ackroyd reconstructs the life of Henry VIII's famed adversary. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
