Wolf Crawl #24: All in hazard

London Meet-Up – Sunday 21 September 2025

Before we get started, a reminder that the first Wolf Crawl gathering is taking place in London on Sunday, 21 September 2025. Matt Brown, Bea Stitches and I will explore Cromwell’s London, from Smithfields to Tower Hill. This will be a lovely opportunity to meet our fellow readers and see some of the sites mentioned in the books.

The meetup will be a walk via Crumb’s old haunts and a few historic pubs, followed by lunch near Tower Hill. You’ll need to buy your own refreshments, but the meetup itself is free.

There are a handful of places left, so let me know as soon as possible if you can come. We can accommodate more people for lunch at the end of our walk, so if you miss out, you can still meet us there. Email or message me to book your place. I look forward to seeing some of you there.

All around him there are signs of unease, little huddles of courtiers that disperse at his approach. If he is to place all in hazard, and he thinks he is, then Gregory should not have to go through the pain and doubt, hour by hour. Let him hear the conclusion of events; he does not need to live through them.

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

Welcome to Week 24 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 final third of Part Two. Chapter I. The Black Book. London, January–April 1536.

In the UK Fourth Estate edition, this section runs from pages 255 to 287. In the US Picador edition, it runs from pages 214 to 241. It begins, “William Fitzwilliam comes to the Rolls House…” It ends, “… if I stopped to think how I was doing it I couldn’t do it at all.”

This summary is followed by a few footnotes of interest.

This week, as Mount Etna erupts, Master Secretary puts all in hazard. Cromwell is compared to the wicked councillor Haman, and Chapuys is tricked into bending the knee. In the archives,

Bea Stitches

reads a shouty missive from Uncle Norfolk. In the haunting of Wolf Hall, Master Skeleton sets the table to butcher the Boleyns.

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.