Latest news with #JoHarkin
Wall Street Journal
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
‘The Pretender' Review: The Boy Who Would Be King
Set at the end of the Wars of the Roses, the long dynastic struggle between the English royal houses of York and Lancaster, Jo Harkin's exuberant historical novel 'The Pretender' brings to life one of the stranger footnotes in late-medieval history. In 1487 Henry VII's right to the crown as a distant Lancastrian descendant through the female line was challenged by a boy only 10 or so years old, whom his supporters claimed to be the rightful Earl of Warwick, nephew of Richard III and a direct Plantagenet heir. The Tudor historian Polydore Vergil in his 'Anglica Historia' (1555) named this pretender Lambert Simnel, a base-born lad 'not entirely of bad character.' The episode ended in victory for Henry later that year at the Battle of Stoke Field. Vergil records that Simnel was pardoned for his role in the attempted takeover and was put to work in Henry's kitchen as a spit-turner, while the Tudors went on to rule England for the next century. The rest, you might say, is history. Or is it? Ms. Harkin takes this incident as the starting point for a rollicking story that's part fact, part lively speculation, and along the way asks some probing questions about the nature of identity. On an Oxfordshire farm, a peasant boy called John Collan is growing up with no battles to fight other than those with the farm goat, until a mysterious nobleman arrives bearing astonishing news: John isn't the farmer's son at all but Edward, the young Earl of Warwick, who as a baby was concealed among simple country folk for his own safety. Now he is to be brought out of hiding as the last Yorkist hope.
Daily Mail
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Stand-out historical novels to read now: The Pretender By Jo Harkin, The Golden Hour By Kate Lord Brown, The Midnight Carousel By Fiza Saeed McLynn
The Pretender By Jo Harkin (Bloomsbury £18.99, 464pp) It's 1480, and England is undergoing a particularly thorny patch as the warring factions of Lancaster and York look to the throne, fight bloody battles, imprison princes in the tower and indulge in mayhem and machinations in the quest for power. Meanwhile in a quiet little hamlet, naive, endearing ten-year-old farmer's son John Collan is about to have his life upended. He's taken from his home by canny political operators and transformed into Lambert Simnel, a pseudonym for his 'real' identity – Edward Plantagenet, who'll become king of England once Henry VII is disposed of. Ambitious, mischievous and well written, Jo Harkin's stand-out second novel's boldly drawn characters and their ruthless aspirations make for an entertaining read. The Golden Hour By Kate Lord Brown (Simon and Schuster £18.99, 448pp) Heady and romantic, Kate Lord Brown's escapist tale heads to 1939 Cairo in the company of gilded, headstrong Juno Munro and handsome, intuitive Max Aeberhardt as they search for the tomb of the legendary queen Nefertiti on an archaeological dig. Heat, dust and forbidden passion play their part in this swoony story, but there's also a stalwart friendship alongside the sexual tension – one based on long-held secrets, as Lucie Fitzgerald discovers when she visits her dying mother Polly in 1970s Beirut. Best friends with Juno since childhood, Polly slowly unspools the tragic story of Juno, her whirlwind marriage to troubled Alec and her overwhelming obsession with Max who, like an old-style Hollywood hero, declares of their love: 'We redraw the maps. We realign the stars' with the Valley of the Kings as a backdrop. The Midnight Carousel By Fiza Saeed McLynn (Michael Joseph £16.99, 368pp) There's a dark, magical glimmer to this enthralling debut from Fiza Saeed McLynn, which opens in 1900 in a foundry workshop in Paris as grieving carousel maker Gilbert Cloutier hurries to finish his beautiful, uncanny masterpiece in time for the city's Great Exhibition. Ensconced in the wilds of Essex, living in rural poverty, outsider Maisie Marlowe is fascinated by a flyer for the mysterious carousel, little realising that it'll play a central role in her intrepid story. In a series of quietly discombobulating events, she ends up in prohibition-era Chicago, helping to run an amusement park, where Cloutier's strange merry-go-round seems linked to the unsolved disappearances of people in both France and America. It adds an eerie edge to an already beguiling tale of a brave woman claiming her hard-won happiness against the odds.
Washington Post
18-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
Historical novel ‘The Pretender' sends a boy into a treacherous world
What happens when the foundations of your identity are taken away? After her science fiction debut ('Tell Me an Ending'), Jo Harkin pivots to historical fiction to chronicle the poignant odyssey of a farm boy taken from the only family he knows, groomed as a claimant to the English throne, then reduced to a menial servant in the victorious king's household.
