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The boy who would be king: The Pretender, by Jo Harkin, reviewed

A magnificent imagining of the life of Lambert Simnel traces his progress from farm boy to coronation in Dublin to turnspit in the Tudor palace kitchens to plans of dark revenge

19 April 2025

9:00 AM

19 April 2025

9:00 AM

The Pretender Jo Harkin

Bloomsbury Circus, pp.464, 18.99

Cock’s bones! This is a most wonderly historical novel, the very reverse of a wind-egg. It tells the story of Lambert Simnel, the youthful figurehead of a Plantagenet uprising against Henry VII in 1487. The historical Simnel is an elusive figure, and most of what little we know comes through Tudor propagandists.

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