Welcome to Wolf Crawl. I am your guide,
, and this is a year-long slow read of Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy: Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies, and The Mirror & the Light.Each week, I dive into the details to provide summaries, background, footnotes and tangents to enrich your reading. I share the paintings, poetry and music mentioned in the books, and I provide links to help you explore more of Cromwell’s world.
We will be joined on our journey by Dr Lucie Bea Dutton.
knows these books probably better than anyone. In her Stitching Cromwell project, she has reimagined the books on cloth. Her work leads her into the archives, and each week, she will dig out a document or artefact to inform and illuminate our reading.We also have
of the Londonist Time Machine. Matt has created a series of maps featuring all the locations mentioned in the books. Each week, Matt will give us a bird’s eye view of the story as Cromwell paces his fateful path from Putney cobblestones to Tower Hill.We begin on 1 January, and we end in the last week of December. You can find the reading schedule on my website, along with plot summaries for the full cast of characters and a list of online resources about Mantel’s writing and Thomas Cromwell.
A slow read is a fabulous thing. It allows us time to soak up the story, immerse ourselves in the detail, and make the books our own.
This post and podcast focus on the areas that interest me, and those that I think are most helpful for a first-time reader. But I encourage you to be curious, creative and inspired and make your own path through Wolf Crawl.
In our first year of this read-along, one of our readers,
, kept a record of the food served in the trilogy, and wrote on a variety of themes, from the flow of information to the languages of Wolf Hall. I would love to see someone follow the seasons or keep tabs on the headgear, such a crucial detail of Tudor England and Cromwell’s story.Each week, I invite readers to share their observations in the comments section. We all benefit from having so many eyes on the page.
If you would like to do so, please come and introduce yourself in the comments of the written version of this episode. I would love to hear more about you, where you’re from, and what brought you to the trilogy and the read-along.
We begin on 1 January with Week One of Wolf Crawl. The post and podcast will cover the first two chapters of Wolf Hall: Part One, Chapter I. Across the Narrow Sea, Putney, 1500, and Chapter II. Paternity, 1527.
This section runs from pages 1 to 33 in the UK Fourth Estate edition and from pages 3 to 30 in the US Picador edition. It begins, ‘So now get up’, and it ends, ‘A black-faced imp with a trident is pricking his calloused heels.’
Wolf Crawl is for paid subscribers to Footnotes and Tangents. A subscription costs £3.50/month or £35/year, and you can find all the details on my website and in this introductory post to Wolf Crawl:
A reminder that on 1 January, new subscriptions will rise to £5/month or £50/year. This will not affect existing subscriptions, so upgrade before New Year’s Day for the best deal.
And that’s all from me. I would like to thank Laura Crow for illustrating Wolf Crawl so beautifully. The podcast music is ‘Scaramella’ by Josquin des Prez, arranged for guitar by Joe Bates and performed by Sam Cave.
I am your guide,
, and this is Wolf Crawl.
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