He is one of the most controversial and often villainised figures from Tudor England, but irrelevant of what people may think, Thomas Cromwell was a staggeringly effective statesman's who totally transformed the landscape of English politics and governance. He oversaw the downfall of Queen Anne Boleyn and the dissolution of the monasteries, only to suffer his own fall from grace in 1540, but who was the real man, and why was he one of the very few people who King Henry VIII freely admitted regret at destroying?
