'The Pretender' centers on a real peasant who learns he is heir to England's throne

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Arts, Books

4.2 • 671 Ratings

🗓️ 26 June 2025

⏱️ 9 minutes

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Summary

In 1483, a 10-year-old peasant named John Collan is visited by a stranger who shares a life-changing piece of information. John isn't the son of a farmer, but the Duke of Clarence – and it's time for him to reclaim his destiny as king of England. Jo Harkin's novel The Pretender expands on this footnote of history from the Tudor period. In today's episode, she joins NPR's Scott Simon for a conversation that touches on her approach to historical fiction, which includes filling in gaps left by patchy records from the 15th century.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. Joe Harkin is on the podcast today.
0:07.6	She's the author of The Pretender. It's an historical fiction novel taking place in England in the
0:12.5	1400s, and it's about a peasant boy who becomes king. And in this interview with NPR Scott
0:18.1	Simon Harkin talks about how she comes from the school
0:21.5	of Hillary Mantel, right?
0:22.8	How it was important to write truthfully about the true things that did happen and then
0:27.9	use the tool of fiction to fill in the gaps.
0:31.2	The issue with writing about peasants, though, is that their history was rarely recorded.
0:36.8	After the break, Harkin talks about how
0:38.3	this book was an opportunity to give this real peasant child's life a second act. That's coming up.
0:46.3	Kings are born, but can they also be made or faked? It's 1483, and John Colin is 10 years old. His object in life is to rid his village
0:57.6	of a demon goat that knocks him about until a stranger well-dressed arrives and informs John that
1:04.7	in fact he is not the son of a farmer. He is the son of the late George, Duke of Clarence. John's real name is Edward Earl of Warwick,
1:14.2	and he is to be king. The Pretender is a new novel from Joe Harkin, and it is drawn from history.
1:22.6	Joe Harkin joins us from Berkshire in the UK. Thanks so much for being with us.
1:26.8	Thank you so much for having me.
1:28.9	Tell us about the people who show up one day. What do they say to him? Yes, so these two
1:35.1	nobles arrive and he thinks he's going to be sent off to have a tutor in Oxford, which is the
1:41.0	nearest town, his little village. And he is shocked to learn that,
1:45.7	apparently he was swapped at birth by his father, the paranoid Duke of Clarence, who is the brother
1:52.2	of King Edward VIII and the brother of King Richard III. And Richard the third is the one on the
1:58.0	throne at the time that the novel starts. So these nobles say you are the last York hope, you're a lost heir.
	...

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