I don't have a good track record for agreeing with the judges of the Booker prize and I haven't read the other candidates for the 2009 prize but Wolf Hall is a very good read. Thomas Cromwell is at the very centre of the novel and his character pervades it. He is something of an enigma and all aspects of his character come through. He is in turn an abused child, a waif and stray, an opportunist, a lawyer, a politician, a courtier and, it might be said, a bully. He is ruthless and vulnerable, understanding and intelligent.
One curious but effective technique is that although Mantel focalises the whole book on him, it is written from his point of view, she rarely refers to him by name, only as "he". So, the reader is continually made to ask who is speaking or thinking here, because the "he" is not refering back to the subject of the previous sentence or paragraph, it refers to Cromwell and his reaction to what that person says.
It covers the period of King Henry VIII getting rid of his wife Katherine of Aragon by having his marriage to her annulle and the fallout from his marriage to Anne Boleyn. I am not a devotee of historical novels but this gives a fascinating glimpse into the human story of a pivotal event in English and European history. It has the feel of being very well researched but whether the characters are accurately drawn it is hard to say and it doesn't really matter. Just read and enjoy.

As a Microsoft certified partner (the lowest of the low of partner categories) we get access to new mainstream Microsoft software as soon as it is released. So, I received my first production copy of Windows 7 with interest and decided to install it on a Vista laptop with some trepidation.
So far, I have to say, I am very impressed. It installed easily and fairly quickly and everything worked first time. It is a very nice clean interface. The file explorer is much the same as Vista so can be a bit irritating at times. The good thing is that some key applications, like our CRM system Maximizer 8.0, which don't work on Vista, do work on Windows 7. Compatibility with Windows XP seems to be much better. It also seems to be significantly faster than Vista.
There are also options for running in compatibility mode on short cuts which I have yet to experiment with.
There is the usual problem of driver availability - the webcam on the laptop doesn't work, for example, and some applications are not yet ready for Windows 7 at the time of writing. This includes Norman Virus Control, unfortunately, so for the moment I am using AVG.

I will report again when I have had more exposure to Windows 7.