It is 1483 and 10-year-old John Collan is living on a farm outside Oxford with his father, Will, and waging war on an aggressive goat that keeps trampling him. His mother is long dead and his older twin brothers, Oliver and Tom, have left home to begin apprenticeships. One morning John overhears the dairy maid Jennot discussing how Edward Plantagenet and his younger brother Richard, sons of the late King Edward IV, have been imprisoned in the Tower of London by their uncle Richard, Duke of Gloucester. Later, a well-dressed man arrives on a chestnut horse for a meeting with his father. John learns that the man is his benefactor who has paid for him to be tutored. “A bright future!” Will tells his son. “But secret for now.”
A dramatic imagining of the true story of the royal impostor Lambert Simnel, Jo Harkin’s novel tells of a farmboy who is told that he is Edward V, 17th Earl of Warwick, rightful heir to the English throne and the elder prince in the tower. Having been tutored in great literature and courtly ways, our protagonist becomes a hapless pawn in the games of ambitious conspirators and is sent to Ireland where he becomes the figurehead of the Yorkist rebellion against the so-called usurper Henry VII.
The actor John Hollingworth delivers a confident and charismatic reading of this gripping and bawdily entertaining novel that delights in ripe early Tudor vernacular. When the rebellion against Henry fails, the life of Edward, AKA Lambert and John, is spared, leaving him to find his own path away from the machinations of strangers.
Available via Bloomsbury, 14hr 37min
Further listening
The Tiger’s Share
Keshava Guha, John Murray, 10hr 43min
Nikki Patel narrates this tale of sibling rivalry and patriarchy set in Delhi. The lives of two siblings – Tara and Rohit – are turned upside down after their father announces he is leaving his fortune not to them but to the cause of climate activism.
The Tremolo Diaries
Justin Currie, New Modern, 8hr 17min
The Del Amitri frontman reflects on a life mostly spent on the road with his band and the life-altering diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease, aged 58, that threatened to derail his career.