Reviewing the arts can sometimes feel like curating a museum. There is a temptation (predominantly, though not exclusively, felt on the Right) to act as if all the great works are behind us, and our role is to preserve all we can — or perhaps to lament what has come since. Hilary Mantel, who died last week at 70, was the writer I would most often point to in order to argue that some of the arts, in fact, are flourishing. Mantel’s three-volume trilogy (Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies, and The Mirror and the Light) was a masterwork. Adaptations of the three have made notable recent contributions to stage drama and prestige television as well, two other categories that continue to thrive.

The Wolf Hall books followed the career of Thomas Cromwell, the chief minister to King Henry VIII and the architect of the English Reformation. In Mantel’s hands, Cromwell became (quite ahistorically, but artistically convincingly) a sort of patron saint of modernity, full of moderation, good sense, and a sharp sense of humor. In the first novel, he engineered the downfall of Sir (Saint) Thomas More, in this portrayal a religious fanatic and the embodiment of all that was darkest about the Middle Ages. In the second volume, Cromwell arranged the destruction and execution of Anne Boleyn, his chief rival for the management of Henry VIII and, thus, of England. Only at the end of the third novel, which largely focuses on Cromwell’s time in undisputed power, did Cromwell’s own time on the block come.