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James McCONICA, Tomás Moro. Translated by Francisco Mitjans. Introduction by Dominic Baker-Smith. Madrid: Rialp, 2016, 120 pages., ISBN 978-84-321-4620-6.
It's impossible to read or write a "short" biography of Thomas More without thinking of Erasmus's great portrait of his friend to Ulrich von Hutten, not only the first and best (at least according to Germain Marc'hadour) but also likely the shortest of them all. To write a brief life of a famous historical character is always a challenging task, but particularly so in the case of More, with his complex and mysterious personality, his roles as family man and public figure, poet and humanist, whose career in an age of transition and religious crisis went from great success to tragedy, from tranquility of mind to vilification and death. An excess of brush-strokes easily impedes the portraitist's essential task which is to get to the heart of a human mind and life.
The English original of James McConica's biography of More, written for the National Portrait Gallery in London to celebrate the 500th anniversary of More's birth, was reviewed in Moreana in 1978. I never read the...