For years a good short life of Thomas Wolsey that captures the best recent research and is suitable for students has been badly needed. A. F. Pollard's Wolsey (1929) is hopelessly outdated, and Peter Gwyn's The king's cardinal (1990), despite some important passages, is distractingly long-winded and misleading, since it fails to see Wolsey as a pan-European figure, one who at his zenith was more than Henry viii's servant. Stella Fletcher understands as few others have that Wolsey's status as a Renaissance cardinal was his greatest asset. His magnificent buildings, tapestries and art collections were fundamental to how cardinals exercised authority, as was their concern for education, justice and the poor. Fletcher offers concise, compelling chapters organised chronologically, but also structured as far as possible around themes such as Wolsey's apprenticeship, his career as Lord Chancellor, his papal pretensions, heretics and rebels, and Henry's divorce. In practice, the themes quickly dissolve in favour of a chronological narrative charting Wolsey's place within England and Europe. Although generally sure-footed as a biographer, Fletcher does not attempt to recreate Wolsey's interior world, and occasionally omits what readers will want to know: we learn, for example, all about the conclaves to choose a new pope in 1521–2 and 1523, but not whether Wolsey really wanted to be elected. Despite this, she admirably fills a large gap in the literature.