Mantel, who has written frankly in the past about her misdiagnosed endometriosis, knows what she’s talking about: her essay “Meeting the Devil”, describing abdominal surgery she underwent in 2010, is one of the most irreverent and savagely convivial meditations on pain and illness you are ever likely to read (no wearing away of the intellect here). ‘Historians,’ says Mantel writes, ‘and, I’m afraid, doctors, underestimate what chronic pain can do to sour the temper and wear away both the personality and the intellect.’ In his later years Henry suffered from osteomyelitis, an infection in the bone of the leg. But she also argues persuasively that the ageing and increasingly irascible king fits the picture for McLeod syndrome, the symptoms of which include progressive muscular weakness in the lower body, depression, paranoia, and an erosion of personality – which would make the tragedy of his reign “not a moral but a biological tragedy, inscribed on the body”. The author is, of course, quite brilliant on the Tudors and the various iterations of Henry VIII, from strapping young prince (“Hooray Henry”), through pious apostate (“Holy Henry”) to tyrannical Bluebeard (“Horrid Henry”).
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