Sorry if I seemed snappy when I said `i`im entitled to my opinions` earlier, its just i`m forever being brow-beaten by More fanatics with scary, slavish devotion to the man when posting on various Tudor history boards. That doesn`t justify my defensiveness here though, so I am sorry for that.
You say you`re not going to read Wolf Hall because it `clashes very greatly with how I view Thomas More`. Forgive me, LNor19, is that not what all good fiction should do? Challenge your perceptions, as well as re-inforce others? I feel you should, not just because it`s a beautifully written piece (Mantel is supremely gifted), but because we should all be open to other influences, open to change and willing to take on board the view points of others.
Thomas More may well have been a man of his time, but so was Cardinal Wolsey, who was content to send heretics into exile, rather than burn them. And he a Cardinal of the Catholic Church (More was simply a Layman). I`ve just said on another thread here, that people always put More on a pedestal and revere him as this paragon of virtue. Really, its not that simple. Yes, the torture allegations were exactly that, and I used the term in my other post. However, the two whippings are believed to have taken place (one was Dick Purser, a servant in More`s household who was found to have Lutheran sympathies, and I forget the other). That, too me, is just another form of torture.

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