Wolf Crawl #20: Teeter-totter

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Bea Stitches

and myself at the

Wolf Hall Weekend

by the Tower of London on Saturday 6th and Sunday 7th June 2026. Expert panels and keynote talks from Tracy Borman, Diarmaid MacCullouch and Ben Miles. An exclusive performance of the stage adaptation of The Mirror and the Light. Great food, guided walks, and pastime with good company. We would love to see you there. Find out more and buy tickets here..

He is moving too fast to make much of her last sentence; though, as he will admit later, the detail will affix itself and adhere to certain sentences of his own, not yet formed. Phrases only. Elliptic. Conditional. As everything is conditional now. Anne blossoming as Katherine fails. He pictures them, their faces intent and skirts bunched, two little girls in a muddy track, playing teeter-totter with a plank balanced on a stone.

Last Week | Home Page | Reading Schedule
Further Resources: Hilary Mantel | Wolf Hall

Welcome to Week 20 of Wolf Crawl. I am your guide,

Simon Haisell

, 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 detail with summaries, background, footnotes and tangents to enrich your reading. I am joined on this journey by

Bea Stitches

, who delves into the archive on our behalf, and Matt Brown, who makes maps to help us find our way through Cromwell’s world.

You can find the reading schedule and plot summaries for the full cast of characters on my website, Footnotes and Tangents. There, you can join other slow reads, including Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, and Hilary Mantel’s A Place of Greater Safety.

I start each post with a summary of the week’s story illustrated by a map created by Matt Brown. This week, we are reading the second half of Part One. Chapter II. Crows. London and Kimbolton, Autumn 1535.

In the UK Fourth Estate edition, this section runs from pages 75 to 119. In the US Picador edition, it runs from pages 62 to 100. It begins, “But look: we have sat here too long!” It ends, “poisoned, and with his throat cut.”

This summary is followed by a few footnotes of interest.

This week, Anne and Katherine teeter-totter across a muddy ditch, we play real tennis with Hercules – feeling his age. We have a licence to crenellate, to grow our beards and turn the page in the Book Called Henry. We say our prayers in Welsh, meet the queen’s fool and eat the forbidden fruit. In the archives, Bea gets out her stamps and spots Henry at Hampton Court. In the haunting of Wolf Hall, we are the carrion crow, picking over dead meat.

And then it is over to you. In the comments, let us know what caught your eye and ask the group any questions you may have. And if you’ve tumbled down a rabbit hole or taken your reading off on a tangent, please share where you have been and what you have found.

To get these posts in your inbox or the Substack app, subscribe to Footnotes and Tangents and turn on notifications for ‘2025 Wolf Crawl’ in your subscription settings.