2025 Wolf Crawl Reading Schedule

A slow read of Hilary Mantel's Cromwell trilogy

Hello Wolf Crawlers!

This is our reading schedule for 2025. A full introduction to the read-along will be published this Friday.

Every Wednesday, you will receive a post from me with discussion and resources for that week’s reading. You can chat with fellow readers in the comment section of each post. To receive these posts, turn on notifications for 2025 Wolf Crawl in your settings.

Everything related to the slow read can be found here:

Some long chapters have been divided across weeks. I have included opening and closing sentences and page numbers. Page numbers are a guide only and are correct for the Fourth Estates paperback editions.

Wolf Hall

Week 1: Across the Narrow Sea / Paternity

Wednesday 1 January – Tuesday 7 January
Pages 1 – 33 (33 pages)
First Line: ‘So now get up.’
Last Line: A black-faced imp with a trident is pricking his calloused heels.

Week 2: At Austin Friars / Visitation

Wednesday 8 January – Tuesday 14 January
Pages 34 – 64 (31 pages)
First Line: Lizzie is still up.
Last Line: …my lord won’t be poisoned.

Week 3: An Occult History of Britain (Part 1/2)

Wednesday 15 January – Tuesday 21 January
Pages 65 – 107 (43 pages)
First Line: Once, in the days of time immemorial…
Last Line: All the rivers run to the sea, but the seas are not yet full.

Week 4: An Occult History of Britain (Part 2/2)

Wednesday 22 January – Tuesday 28 January
Pages 108 – 153 (46 pages)
First Line: Morgan Williams shrinks year by year.
Last Line: It is 19 October 1529.

Week 5: Make or Mar / Three-Card Trick

Wednesday 29 January – Tuesday 4 February
Pages 154 – 197 (44 pages)
First Line: Halloween: the world’s edge seeps and bleeds.
Last Line: ‘— sit down with the Boleyns.’

Week 6: Entirely Beloved Cromwell (Part 1/2)

Wednesday 5 February – Tuesday 11 February
Pages 198 – 236 (39 pages)
First Line: He arrives early at York Place.
Last Line: Wolsey is a merciful man, but surely: only up to a point.

Week 7: Entirely Beloved Cromwell (Part 2/2)

Wednesday 12 February – Tuesday 18 February
Pages 236 – 271
First Line: Mary Shelton is in attendance; she looks up, simpers.
Last Line: ‘Leave a space.’

Week 8: The Dead Complain of Their Burial / Arrange Your Face (Part 1/2)

Wednesday 19 February – Tuesday 25 February
Pages 272 – 305 (34 pages)
First Line: The knocking at the gate comes after midnight.
Last Line: …because in the end we all come home to God.

Week 9: Arrange Your Face (Part 2/2)

Wednesday 26 February – Tuesday 4 March
Pages 305 – 337 (33 pages)
First Line: Lent saps the spirits, as of course it is designed to do.
Last Line: ‘I’ll put it on the account.’

Week 10: ‘Alas, What Shall I Do For Love?’ (Part 1/2)

Wednesday 5 March – Tuesday 11 March
Pages 338 – 384 (47 pages)
First Line: Time now to consider the compacts that hold the world together…
Last Line: This girl, you know, she claims she can raise the dead.

Week 11: ‘‘Alas, What Shall I Do For Love?” (Part 2/2) / Early Mass

Wednesday 12 March – Tuesday 18 March
Pages 385 – 416 (32 pages)
First Line: At John Petyt’s funeral…
Last Line: And in that hat there is a feather.

Week 12: Anna Regina (Part 1/2)

Wednesday 19 March – Tuesday 25 March
Pages 419 – 462 (44 pages)
First Line: The two children sit on a bench in the hall of Austin Friars.
Last Line: …Frith is waiting, placid, for his journey to resume.

Week 13: Anna Regina (Part 2/2)

Wednesday 26 March – Tuesday 1 April
Pages 462 – 483 (22 pages)
First Line: Four days.
Last Line: …she puts her foot into the boat.

Week 14: Devil’s Spit / A Painter’s Eye

Wednesday 2 April – Tuesday 8 April
Pages 484 – 527 (44 pages)
First Line: It is magnificent.
Last Line: Gregory says, ‘Did you not know?’

Week 15: Supremacy

Wednesday 9 April – Tuesday 15 April
Pages 531 – 579 (49 pages)
First Line: In the convivial days between Christmas and New Year…
Last Line: …puffing out smoke and clattering their mechanical wings.

Week 16: The Map of Christendom (Part 1/2)

Wednesday 16 April – Tuesday 22 April
Pages 580 – 620 (41 pages)
First Line: ‘Do you want Audley’s post?’
Last Line: …take your sword in your hand.

Week 17: The Map of Christendom (Part 2/2) / To Wolf Hall

Wednesday 23 April – Tuesday 29 April
Pages 620 – 650 (31 pages)
First Line: The Duke of Norfolk comes to visit him…
Last Line: Wolf Hall.

Bring up the Bodies

Week 18: Falcons

Wednesday 30 April – Tuesday 6 May
Pages 1 – 35 (34 pages)
First Line: His children are falling from the sky.
Last Line: …looking out into England.

Week 19: Crows (Part 1/2)

Wednesday 7 May – Tuesday 13 May
Pages 36 – 75 (40 pages)
First Line: Stephen Gardiner! Coming in as he’s going out…
Last Line: If she should die within the year…

Week 20: Crows (Part 2/2)

Wednesday 14 May – Tuesday 20 May
Pages 75 – 119 (45 pages)
First Line: But look: we have sat here too long!
Last Line: …poisoned, and with his throat cut.

Week 21: Angels

Wednesday 21 May – Tuesday 27 May
Pages 120 – 183 (59 pages)
First Line: Christmas morning:
Last Line: ‘Alors … Perhaps just your initials.’

Week 22: The Black Book (Part 1/3)

Wednesday 28 May – Tuesday 3 June
Pages 184 – 223 (40 pages)
First Line: When he hears the shout of ‘Fire!’
Last Line: But her hands and feet are cold…

Week 23: The Black Book (Part 2/3)

Wednesday 4 June – Tuesday 10 June
Pages 223 – 255 (33 pages)
First Line: So here’s the Duke of Norfolk…
Last Line: One day he will give in and invite it to stand by the hearth.

Week 24: The Black Book (Part 3/3)

Wednesday 11 June – Tuesday 17 June
Pages 255 – 287 (33 pages)
First Line: William Fitzwilliam comes to the Rolls House…
Last Line: …if I stopped to think how I was doing it I couldn’t do it at all.

Week 25: Master of Phantoms (Part 1/5)

Wednesday 18 June – Tuesday 24 June
Pages 288 – 323 (36 pages)
First Line: ‘Come and it with me a while.’
Last Line: And lock it in your strongbox.

Week 26: Master of Phantoms (Part 2/5)

Wednesday 25 June – Tuesday 31 June
Pages 323 – 361 (37 pages)
First Line: Mark at Stepney.
Last Line: We shall have no trouble with her now.

Week 27: Master of Phantoms (Part 3/5)

Wednesday 2 July – Tuesday 8 July
Pages 361 – 406 (46 pages)
First Line: He has asked the king to keep to his privy chamber,
Last Line: …and picked their own bones clean.

Week 28: Master of Phantoms (Part 4/5)

Wednesday 9 July – Tuesday 15 July
Pages 406 – 441 (36 pages)
First Line: May is blossoming…
Last Line: If ever a man came close to beheading himself, Thomas More was that man.

Week 29: Master of Phantoms (Part 5/5) / Spoils

Wednesday 16 July – Tuesday 22 July
Pages 441 – 482 (42 pages)
First Line: The queen wears scarlet and black…
Last Line: Here is one.

The Mirror and the Light

Week 30: Wreckage (I)

Wednesday 23 July – Tuesday 29 July
Pages 3 – 25 (23 pages)
First line: Once the queen’s head is severed, he walks away.
Last line: It is 20 May 1536.

Week 31: Salvage (Part 1/3)

Wednesday 30 July – Tuesday 5 August
Pages 27 – 77 (51 pages)
First line: ‘Where’s my orange coat?’
Last line: …feeling as if for the first time the beat of his own heart.

Week 32: Salvage (Part 2/3)

Wednesday 6 August – Tuesday 12 August
Pages 77 – 116 (40 pages)
First line: In his room at the Tower, Thomas Wyatt is sitting at the table where he left him…
Last line: …his burdened and oppressed flesh the place where all arguments come to rest.

Week 33: Salvage (Part 3/3)

Wednesday 13 August – Tuesday 19 August
Pages 116 – 165 (50 pages)
First line: At the Tower, Francis Bryan says, ‘Was this where you kept Tom Wyatt?'
Last line: ‘London, thou art the flower of cities all.’

Week 34: Wreckage (II) (Part 1/2)

Wednesday 20 August – Tuesday 26 August
Pages 167 – 209 (43 pages)
First line: Do you know why they say, ‘There’s no smoke without fire?’
Last line: He says, ‘You must learn to use my title, madam.’

Week 35: Wreckage (II) (Part 2/2)

Wednesday 27 August – Tuesday 2 September
Pages 209 – 251 (43 pages)
First line: As he walks into Autin Friars he meets Richard Cromwell.
Last line: He stood with his back to the brick, feeling the beating of his own heart: waiting to see what he would do next.

Week 36: Augmentation

Wednesday 3 September – Tuesday 9 September
Pages 255 – 277 (23 pages)
First line: The dead man comes out of the Well with Two Buckets…
Last line: …when they fall into bed at night they are tired beyond all temptation; and when they die, they go to Heaven.

Week 37: Five Wounds

Wednesday 10 September – Tuesday 16 September
Pages 279 – 320 (42 pages)
First line: Rumours of Tyndale’s death seep through England as smoke leaks through thatch.
Last line: God help us for now is the time.

Week 38: Vile Blood (Part 1/2)

Wednesday 17 September – Tuesday 23 September
Pages 321 – 355 (35 pages)
First line: Aske: he is a petty gentleman…
Last line: Sexton says, ‘I could smell him from here.’

Week 39: Vile Blood (Part 2/2)

Wednesday 24 September – Tuesday 30 September
Pages 356 – 395 (40 pages)
First line: Bess Darrell is a flitting presence by candlelight, a wraith.
Last line: Try and keep cheerful.

Week 40: The Bleach Fields

Wednesday 1 October – Tuesday 7 October
Pages 399 – 435 (37 pages)
First line: When you become a great man, you meet kinsfolk you never knew you had.
Last line: …and somewhere it is written that Cromwell is his name.

Week 41: The Image of the King (Part 1/2)

Wednesday 8 October – Tuesday 14 October
Pages 437 – 477 (41 pages)
First line: Hans does not like the pavonazzo.
Last line: Legs that could never stagger, feet never lose the path.

Week 42: The Image of the King (Part 2/2) / Broken on the Body

Wednesday 15 October – Tuesday 21 October
Pages 478 – 520 (43 pages)
First line: As July comes in Lord Latimer is down from the north…
Last line: Gregory says, ‘My lord father, who will you let the king marry next?’

Week 43: Nonsuch

Wednesday 22 October – Tuesday 28 October
Pages 523 – 562 (40 pages)
First line: ‘My lord?’ a boy says. ‘A gravedigger is here.’
Last line: …and the name of the palace is Nonsuch.

Week 44: Corpus Christi (Part 1/2)

Wednesday 29 October – Tuesday 4 November
Pages 563 – 598 (36 pages)
First line: Wyatt has followed the Emperor from the shores of Spain to Nice…
Last line: It’s not worth it. Nobody’s worth it.

Week 45: Corpus Christi (Part 2/2) / Inheritance

Wednesday 5 November – Tuesday 11 November
Pages 599 – 625 (27 pages)
First line: In the first week of November he arrests Lord Montague and the Marquis of Exeter.
Last line: He is afraid it will answer back.

Week 46: Ascension Day (Part 1/2)

Wednesday 12 November – Tuesday 18 November
Pages 629 – 651 (23 pages)
First line: ‘Call-Me wants a picture of the king,’
Last line: When you look at him these days you think of Jupiter, planet of increase.

Week 47: Ascension Day (Part 2/2)

Wednesday 19 November – Tuesday 25 November
Pages 651 – 682 (32 pages)
First line: One morning after Easter he wakes with a heavy, aching head, his neck stiff.
Last line: ‘Mid-August,’ he writes. ‘Five days. Wolf Hall.’

Week 48: Twelfth Night

Wednesday 26 November – Tuesday 2 December
Pages 683 – 718 (36 pages)
First line: In August Hans rolls up the bride, brings her home, and slaps her on a panel for the king’s inspection.
Last line: The king will meet her at Blackheath, conduct her to Greenwich palace, and marry her by Twelfth Night.

Week 49: Magnificence (Part 1/2)

Wednesday 3 December – Tuesday 9 December
Pages 719 – 765 (47 pages)
First line: The king’s new castle at Deal is a way station for Anna to wash her hands…
Last line: The loss of the boy is like a cold wind on his neck.

Week 50: Magnificence (Part 2/2)

Wednesday 10 December – Tuesday 16 December
Pages 765 – 806 (42 pages)
First line: When the court moves to Westminster, they go by river…
Last line: The flint sparkles like sunlight on the sea.

Week 51: Mirror (Part 1/2)

Wednesday 17 December – Tuesday 23 December
Pages 809 – 847 (39 pages)
First line: Sunset, Christophe stands on the threshold.
Last line: As Wyatt writes, Lauda finem: praise the end.

Week 52: Mirror (Part 2/2) / Light

Wednesday 24 December – Tuesday 30 December
Pages 847 – 875 (29 pages)
First line: Edmund Walsingham, the Lieutenant of the Tower, comes next day.
Last line: …tracking the light along the wall.