Join our slow read of William Golding's The Inheritors
Endnotes #22: What are you reading? • News • The Inheritors • My recent reads
Hi everyone!
Simon Haisell here, the host of Footnotes & Tangents: guides to the books I love and read-alongs at a gentle pace.
What have you been reading this month?
This is our monthly thread where we talk about the other books we’ve been reading. Let us know your recent and current reads below. The comments section gets fairly busy, so please put THE BOOK TITLE in capital letters to help fellow readers navigate the discussion. Thank you!
If you’re new here – hello! Check out our big welcome post to find out what it is all about.
Join our slow read of The Inheritors by William Golding
So, if you don’t know, we’ve got two big ongoing read-alongs: War and Peace and Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell books. These are slow reads based on my book guides. You can follow the reading schedule or read at your own pace, and latecomers are always welcome!
Alongside these biggies, we’re reading some shorter books. And next Friday marks the start of a four-week slow read of William Golding’s The Inheritors. Published in 1955, a year after Golding’s groundbreaking debut, Lord of the Flies, his second novel is a reimagining of the last days of the Neanderthals.
The Inheritors is a fable, a book about evil and human intelligence, and what we may have lost on our path towards civilisation. It’s science fiction, a “first contact” novel in which humans are cast as the alien invaders. And it is prehistoric poetry, a jaw-dropping mind meld with our Neanderthal ancestors.
Arthur Koestler described The Inheritors as “an earthquake in the petrified forests of the English novel.” Ben Okri calls it a “strange dream” of a book. Golding’s invention is remarkable: putting Palaeolithic consciousness on the page; imagining a world where language and abstract thought are emerging into the light.
It’s a thrill to read.
We start on Friday, 5 June. There will be four in-depth discussion posts packed with resources, footnotes and tangents. These will be available as a podcast, and you can come and share your thoughts in the comments as usual.
Here’s the reading schedule. And here’s the home page:
How do I join?
It’s a two-step process:
Subscribe to Footnotes & Tangents, and
Turn on notifications for “2026 The Inheritors” in the subscription settings.
You will receive a weekly post/email that links to the discussion post and podcast for that week’s reading.
The first week’s post is free. After that, you’ll need a paid subscription to Footnotes & Tangents (£5/month or £50/year). Complimentary subscriptions are available for readers on no or low income. Just ask! And for the next 7 days, you can get 33% off an annual subscription with access to all the book guides.
Talking about slow reading
At the start of the year, I challenged myself to do more live videos. This is well out of my comfort zone, but it’s fun to see where it leads. Right now, those conversations are scattered all over the place:
Watch again: Conversations with Kristine Benoit de Bykhovetz | Bea Dutton | Sabrina Nesbitt | Sarah Fay | Sarah Steward Holland | Caroline Donahue
So in a bid to get them all in one place, I’ve made a space for Footnotes & Tangents on YouTube. I’ve uploaded two videos so far, my chat with Sarah Fay, PhD in January:
And Bea Stitches and I nattering about Cromwell:
If you like what I’m doing, I’d be thrilled if you drifted over to YouTube to like, share and subscribe. And I’ll get the other videos up there when I can, along with some new ones that are…
Coming soon
I’ve got more Substack Lives lined up in June.
Dr Lacey Bonar Hull of The Historian’s Desk. Tuesday 16 June 8 PM BST. Lacey is a medievalist and early modern historian, and I will have just got back from the Wolf Hall Weekend, so I suspect we’ll be talking Tudor and Thomas Cromwell!
Laura Crow, actor, illustrator, playwright, all-around talent. Tuesday 23 June 8 PM BST. Laura designed the beautiful art for Wolf Crawl, including 52 portraits for the slow read, AND all the Footnotes & Tangents artwork. We’ll probably chat about that, as well as Laura’s play about the Rochfords. Looking forward to it!
Bea Stitches. OK, Bea and I haven’t set a date for a second chat, but we definitely need to do a debrief of all things Cromwell after Wolf Hall Weekend, which is taking place on 6 June at All Hallows by the Tower of London. More info here.
My recent reads
Here’s what I read in May:
KINDRED: NEANDERTHAL LIFE, LOVE, DEATH AND ART by Rebecca Wragg Sykes (2020)
Prep for the Golding slow read. Fascinating book, and the author is also a fan of The Inheritors.
STEAL LIKE AN ARTIST by Austin Kleon (2012)
I was in the mood for some artistic larceny.
THE WITCHES by Roald Dahl (1983)
Read to Zack. So much fun to read! He loved it.
BECOMING A WRITER by Dorothea Brande (1934)
Hilary Mantel recommended this book and said she regularly re-read it throughout her writing career. Fantastic on the psychology of writing and, written almost a century ago, well ahead of its time.
REGENERATION by Pat Barker (1991)
For our slow read. Utterly brilliant.
THE MIRROR AND THE LIGHT by Hilary Mantel (2020)
Revisiting my favourite of the Cromwell books as prep for Wolf Hall Weekend next week. My love and admiration for this book deepens every time I return.
THE DEOR HORD: AN OLD ENGLISH BESTIARY by Hana Videen (2023)
Old English animals, ordinary, extraordinary and fantastical. Riveting!
THE GIFTS OF READING FOR THE NEXT GENERATION edited by Jennie Orchard (2025)
A fabulous collection of essays, mostly by fiction writers, on passing on a love of reading to children.
THE GIFTS OF READING by Robert Macfarlane (2016)
The very short book that inspired the essay collection. Vintage Macfarlane.
What have you been reading?
Now it’s over to you. Let us know what you’re reading in the comments.
And if you can put THE BOOK TITLE in capital letters, it will help others find books they love or may be interested in.
Wishing you all wild and wonderful reading. Until next time,
Just finished THE EMPEROR OF GLADNESS by Ocean Vuong. A beautiful tribute to American society's struggling underclass. Poetry as prose. I highly recommend.
Finished a reread of CROSSING TO SAFETY by Wallace Stegner. I read it 33 years ago and nominated it for my library book club giving me incentive to reread it. It did not disappoint me, but the book club largely disliked it. (Philistines!) It might have been a mistake to introduce my "all time favorite" book to others. I've never read his National Book Award winner Spectator Bird so that's on my list.
I liked REGENERATION. Also watched the film adaptation with Jonathan Price. Grim but pretty good.
To keep existential dread at bay, I chuckled through Alexander McCall Smith's latest 44 Scotland Street installment, BERTIE'S THEORY OF ICE CREAM, and continue through Mick Herron's SLOW HORSES series. Oh, and Anthony Horowitz's latest in his Hawthorne series, DEADLY EPISODE. I need some laughs, so aside from the various slow reads, I'm keeping it light.