Wolf Hall comes to Penshurst...

I see Penshurst Place is in the news again. Many an Elizabethan drama has been filmed at the splendid 14th Century stately home but the latest one, Wolf Hall, is likely to give the place international recognition. It is a lovely house to visit or even just to walk around if you don't want to pay the entrance fee. Right on our doorstep as well if you fancy a stroll or a bike ride it's only about 5 very picturesque miles away across the footpaths. As for the book (actually books because the TV dramatization combines Hilary Mantel's two books Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies, charting the rise and fall of Henry VIII's Machiavellian adviser, Thomas Cromwell,) I didn't care too much for it myself, finding it rather long winded and telling me, mostly inaccurately, what I thought I already knew. The truth is that I only finished it because it had been awarded the Booker Prize for fiction so I assumed it most be fabulous. (By no means is this always so in my experience.) The TV drama though, judging by the first episode at any rate, is superbly done....