Cromwell marches on TV

The BBC is planning to adapt author Hilary Mantel's Booker-winning novel Wolf Hall into a mini-series (Getty Images)

The BBC is planning a television mini-series adaptation of Hilary Mantel's Booker-winning novel Wolf Hall.

The acclaimed fictional biography charts the rise to power of Thomas Cromwell in the court of Henry VIII. It would be co-produced by the American network HBO and broadcast on BBC2. Peter Straughan, whose writing credits include the new film version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, is working on scripts for the four-parter.

The announcement comes in the same week that Mantel, below left, said that the sequel to Wolf Hall had now become two books.

A second novel, Bring Up the Bodies, is due to be published next year focusing on Anne Boleyn. The third book, The Mirror And the Light, will continue Cromwell's story up to his execution in 1540.

Mantel said Boleyn's story would be "shorter, more concentrated, covering the action of a few months in close focus".

Wolf Hall won the Booker Prize in 2009.