Mantel's Magic

The Haunting of Wolf Hall #1: Across the Narrow Sea / Paternity

This is a bonus post for paid subscribers to accompany this weekly discussion post of the Cromwell trilogy by Hilary Mantel.

Witches' Sabbath by Frans Francken the Younger, 1606. Source.

Wolf Hall is a ghost story. We don’t often talk about this. We are too taken up by the intrigue of the Tudor court and the barbed conversation in candlelit halls. Mantel’s books get shelved as historical fiction, where they twitch uneasily beside bodice and hose, ruff and rapier.