This work explores the many contrasting layers of Thomas Wolsey's life and career, and represents the first genuinely popular biography of the much-maligned cardinal to appear in over 30 years. Making no assumptions, it looks at the real person in the cold light of his actions, and uncovers a man of contradictions and extremes whose meteoric rise was marked by an equally inexorable descent into desperation, as he attempted in vain to satisfy the tempestuous master whose ambition ultimately broke him.