The analysis is trivial and misleading, the data inaccurate, and the judgements banal and rather nauseating.

Wolf Hall is not a high faluting “literary” novel. Have you ever read Ulysses? It’s a largely chronological tale of very well-known historical events, through the prism of an engaging central character. There are no literary tricks of any kind – if you’ve never read a novel that has speech that’s not in direct quotation marks I pity you. Even Grisham is occasionally that sophisticated.

And sorry if Mantel doesn’t clog up her narrative with retelling vast chunks of history so you can get the facts straight. My copy has a chronology, two family trees, and a seven page list of characters – more than enough. Would you prefer Mantel have a long non fiction section at the beginning? Or that she spells out what has happened in clumsy chunks of dialogues in her characters’ mouths like some crappy historical who-dunnit?

I’ll make a note to tell Count Tolstoy next time I see him, or Joseph Roth, or Walter Scott. There was a time when historical novelists were able to assume their readers were knowledgeable, intelligent and curious, and would seek more knowledge if required without complaining about it. Clearly Mr Kluth would rather readers were treated like school children.

I can’t even be bothered to re read his pathetic piece – I note he is the author of one of those ghastly history books pitched at the corporate workplace so perhaps it’s not surprising. But all I can say is that most people are more intelligent than the middle management drones you try to sell your ahistorical, warmed-up Sun Tzu to. Wolf Hall was one of the top ten best selling fiction hardbacks in the UK in the last decade. Everyone I know from teachers, to businesswomen, to politicians, has adored it.

There is a simple reason for this. People want – indeed crave – intelligent writing about weighty subjects that doesn’t patronize the reader, and that genuinely conveys not only drama, excitement but even – as Mantel does, some of the magic and mystery of how individuals meet challenges and seek to mould or are moulded by history.

I used to think people read the Economist for similar reasons. But if this author writes for them I’m not so sure? By the way could you include a primer on the bond market in each (and every subsequent) issue? And an explanation of the American constitution and how it works in practice? And an account of the last ten years events in the Middle East? Thanks. In every issue, mind.

The genre is what I like most. In my imagination I live in history. And Mantel does give us an intriguing (an admittedly underwhelming adjective) interpretation of some great characters. When I decide to overlook her self-conscious and confusing writing style, I do submerge into her world.

What I was really saying in the post is not that the book is bad (it is not) but that it is disappointing, because it is not nearly as good as the critics are lining up to make it seem.

Incidentally, I’ve already noticed that my seemingly “bad” review has made some of you more, not less, likely to buy the book. Mantel should thank me. And I might hope for similarly “bad” reviews when my book comes out.

I would suspect that many important issues are ignored, in principle, for this very reason.

There is comfort in the dangers of pseudo innocence.

Voluntary ignorance breeds a treacherous ease only disturbed by the importance of the excluded.

But I do feel guilty. I have certain highbrow tendencies. Ahem. I just think that real quality, if not genius, transcends high and lowbrow and remains simple and elegant in an Einsteinian/Brancusian way.

Basically, Phil, your theory seems to be that Mantel was showing off. Well, she shouldn’t.

(And btw, if she really was showing off, then, and only then, I permit myself to remark that she makes lots of grammatical errors. She uses WHOM when WHO is correct, confusing object and subject, and I can only guess that she was being pompous.)

You said it much better than I did here: The writer should do more work so that the reader need do less, and “work” consists of choosing better (more telling) details.

Mantel has dumped lots of detail on us, but it’s the sort of detail that passes as “writerly” these days. She leaves out details that we need.

So it goes back to Rembrandt’s Man in the Golden Helmet: We need some light to illuminate the parts that are worth seeing, not the rest.

I might suggest that one of the reasons that you have found that reviews of Wolf Hall are predominately positive is because most reviewers (who may or may not have read and assimilated the work) are merely satisfied that the book is prize winner and will therefore rave about it. After all, if they disagree with the judges, the burden of proof is on them. Alternatively, having read the book and found it abstruse they will rave about it to demonstrate that they ‘got’ it. Forgive my cynicism.

Which is to say literary highbrows, who are in love with the sudden shifts from present tense to past tense, from the first-person to third, and the other literary devices which make life difficult for the non literary-expert reader – devices which may be intentional (perhaps unconsciously) to keep literature unsullied by the hoi-polloi.

It would therefore be literary highbrows who Hilary Mantel is writing for. If one isn’t a literary highbrow, and wishes to read novels about the England of Henry VIII, then Philippa Gregory may be more one’s cup of tea. If one is more interested in the actual history, then why not just read actual history books and biographies.

Is it a good thing for contemporary novels to be divided between those for literary experts, and those for the rest? Some think it not a good development.

But why isn’t it? If books on science can be divided between those for the expert scientist, and those for the general reader, and everyone says this is fine; why isn’t it fine for literature?

Do we not live in the age of the Specialist?

That said, I – even though a decided non literary-expert, and definitely of the hoi-polloi – will probably now fork out $40 to read Wolf Hall, because you’ve piqued my curiosity.

But you’re saying that I should agree that it is “witty and densely populated”? That I can agree to.

Mind you, I reserve the right to be hypocritical, by gloating if and when the judges should ever choose me.

If so, you should be mindful (if you are not already) of the laudatory reviews of it in no less than The Guardian (UK), The Observer (UK), The Independent (UK), The Washington Post, The NY Review of Books, and The NY Times.

The NY Times (Janet Maslin) did, however, say this: This witty, densely populated book may experience a rough passage when it crosses the Atlantic. For readers not fully versed in the nuances of England’s tangled royal bloodlines, not amused by Ms. Mantel’s deliberate obliqueness (“half the world is called Thomas,” the book observes, and it is in no hurry to differentiate one Thomas from another — or even to use proper names when a “he,” “him” or “his” will do) or not even familiar with the effect of the law of praemunire on the papacy, “Wolf Hall” has its share of stumbling blocks..

Despite this echo of what you said, you still should have loved “Wolf Hall” as much as did Janet Maslin!!!