I am bowling along in a cab, on my way to a clinic to have a blood test, and my mind starts moving toward the later Henry VIII, and his poor health, and I wonder what it was like for his advisers to roll in for the morning strategy meeting and find him surrounded by his doctors. I take out my notebook and write: “Basin of blood. Urine flask. Holy Grail?”

Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self-…, loc. 1097