The new Season of Wolf Hall (The Mirror and the Light) is about to start March 25, 2025 on PBS and the first Season of Wolf Hall is now playing on Amazon Prime (here) in anticipation. It is a fictionalized biography of the rise of Thomas Cromwell from the historical novel by English author Hilary Mantel.
In addition to superb acting and beautiful cinematography, Thomas Cromwell's life (1485-1540) takes place right during the birth of the Modern World System in England. Understanding the Historical dynamics happening during Cromwell's life makes, for me, a compelling story even more fascinating. What might be, for some readers, dry historical analysis might see daunting (to me it isn't, but see Immanuel Wallerstein's Modern World System I). However, I also have statistical models of the period that I can report on which, for me, is even more interesting (the models are based on data from Angus Maddison's Contours of the World Economy 1-2030).
I future posts,I will present results from my models and try to correlated the historical data trends to events with the Wolf Hall Miniseries. For now, take a look at the trailer for Season 2 (below). I hope you find all this as interesting as I do!
