Jo Harkin on Lambert Simnel
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Hey friend, welcome back to the Renaissance English History Podcast. You are about to listen to or watch an interview with Joe Harkin, author of the forthcoming book The Pretender about Lambert Stimnell. One of the perks of being a patron or YouTube member is that there are monthly author chats.

with fabulous authors like Joe Harkin. So if you would like to attend these chats live when I have them, just become a patron at patreon.com slash englandcast, patreon.com slash englandcast. Or if you're watching this on YouTube, just go ahead and click join this channel to see all of the perks.

All right, let's get into it. Jo Harkin is the author, like I said, of the forthcoming book, The Pretender, about Lambert Simnel. She is fabulous. The book is amazing. I highly recommend it. Her passion is literary sci-fi with an emphasis on how new technology impacts human lives. Her inspirations include Kazuo Ishiguro, Jennifer Egan, Charlie Kaufman, and Margaret Atwood.

Her first speculative fiction novel, Tell Me an Ending, was released in March of 2022. She lives in Berkshire, England. So I'm so glad that she took the time to chat with us about her research and about what drew her to Lambert Simnel's story. Let's jump right in.

What drew you to Lambert Seminole's story? It's somebody that people still argue about, is kind of elusive in a lot of ways, sort of niche. What was it that actually drew you to Lambert Seminole? It was really unexpected, actually. So at the time, I was meant to be writing a sci-fi novel, the follow-up to my first.

And I was kind of procrastinating on that a little bit. I was reading a book about the kings and queens of England. And I kind of I just met Lambert in a footnote. He really was just a tiny part of the history. And I was intrigued. I kind of I googled him and didn't really find out much else.

And I was like, who is this kid? So he'd had such a crazy life. You know, we don't know who he was. He was basically, you know, he spearheaded or not spearheaded. He was put as the head of an invasion of England when he was still a child. Claimed to be Edward Earl of Warwick. And...

And we don't know what he thought about any of this. Like nothing really in his own words survives. I'm not really going to take his confession as being in his own words because that was almost undoubtedly written for him. And yeah, I kind of, I kept thinking on it as the days passed, like wondering, yeah, how he felt about all of this. Also what happened to him after his, the end of his invasion, which happened when he was still young. So what, you know, what happened to him after that?

And so, yeah, these questions of what was he thinking? What did he do next? It kept kind of haunting me. And at that point, as a writer, I think I was sort of my fate was sealed. I was curious. And I was like, OK, not going to write a sci-fi. I'm going to write a historical novel. So had you been into history, into Tudor history at all before? Or was this all new? Embarrassingly, no, not really. Like, I'm kind of familiar with it in the way that most people are. And, you know, it's kind of

Obviously Elizabeth I, Henry VIII, they're very popular in, you know, in fiction and on television, films, everything. So I kind of, I had this sort of background sense of them, but not really any specific knowledge. I mean, I did English literature at university, so I knew a few of the texts of the period, but very little about the life of, you know, the kings, queens and the everyday people. So, yeah. Yeah.

I just, I'm thinking about the amount of research that you had to do for this and, and also then getting, in some ways it's almost similar. I'm thinking about the scene where Lambert Simnel goes and is at Margaret of Burgundy's court and learning all of the etiquette at the banquets and figuring out like who to sit, who stands up first and what's a salt trench or the salt ship and all of that kind of stuff. Yeah.

It's almost like you were researching that and trying to figure it out along with Lambert. Were there parallels like that? That's so funny that you picked up on that. I think, yeah, there was this whole set piece of a scene where he's thrown into this banquet in one of the highest courts in Europe. And he has no idea what he's doing. He spends his time trying to work out what this mysterious object near him is and what he's meant to do with it. And it's the salt cellar. And a lot of that did reflect my own anguish with him dealing with this era because it

Yeah, the research was tough, like particularly the etiquette, because a lot of it would be unspoken for them. They did have some etiquette, but then there were other things that were just

you were expected to know so for example I'd be looking up like okay they have garter ropes in a castle and they have chamber pots but when do they use one when do they use the other it was all these little things that kind of kept me I kept kind of stumbling over them and having to stop and try to look into it um so yeah that that element of the research did take a lot longer than I expected I think I was I think I was a bit naive when I went into it I

For my previous novel I'd researched, it was because it was sort of, the sci-fi was like a what-if scenario with sort of

changing memory. And so I'd gone deep in like academic journals, looking at how memory is formed, how it can be manipulated, deteriorate. And I really felt after that, like, yeah, I'm a thorough researcher, like I'm good at research. And so when I started the historical, I was like, oh, I think I'll probably spend a year researching and that'll wrap it up. I'll have everything I need by then. I'm very thorough.

And actually it took nearly five years all in all. Oh my goodness. Because of the things like the etiquette. But yes, it was a lot of fun, but yeah, a much slower process. And that was a humbling part of it, which I needed to go through.

Yeah. What was it like? I have to say, I have not read Tell Me an Ending, but I have added it to my wishlist now and I will read it. It looks really interesting. And that's about memory removal. And then this, like you said, is historical fiction. What was it like switching between these genres and what were the common threads, if any, that you found between these two stories? Yeah. So, I mean, switching between the genres, you'd think it would be a bit of a

you know, a bit discombobulating. But actually, that was the easy part. Like, I found it quite... Once I have a sort of voice and a concept, I found it quite easy to inhabit the near future of Tell Me An Ending. And then I found it equally easy to just go back 500 years to the Tudor era. And I think that was helped by the fact that the Tudors, while in some ways they're very different to us, in other ways their mindset was really relatable. And I found enough there to kind of really get into, which was great. So...

The time jump wasn't so much an issue as the research. That was the main challenge. But yes, in terms of common threads, I think what was probably common to both of identity. So the characters in Tell Me an Ending, they've all had a memory removed. That's kind of in the backstory. And they've all been told that they've had a memory removed. They've just found out and they're offered the chance to get it back. And that's the central concept. But.

And for them, you know, this is kind of disturbing because I think we tend to conceptualize ourselves in terms of history. So we think that our history is us. And when a part of it's missing, we think, well, how does that affect ourself? There's a part of myself missing. And, you know, this isn't necessarily the truth of what ourself is, but it is how a lot of us like that's how we get around it. And so that's, you know, that's a challenge for them. And then Lambert, he's kind of got a different challenge with his identity and that,

Um, so I mean, now, for example, I think we're really interested in our own, you know, the history of our, our DNA, um, and our birth. So, you know, people who want to look at their birth parents because it, it will bring meaning to them. If we want to look up their family tree and, you know, get your DNA results and stuff, these are still things we talk about now, obviously. Um, but back then it was much more critical, um, you know,

The idea at the time was that, you know, there was this order that had been chosen by God and you had your place within it and that was defined by your birth. It wasn't quite a caste system, but it was a lot closer than we have now. So, you know, for society to work smoothly and well, you needed to know your place and play your part, whether that be a peasant being obedient or a noble ruling with, you know, ruling graciously. They didn't really question that. You just had to sort of do your role well.

So Volambe is very painful to not know who he is in this system because, yeah, how does he define himself now? Yeah, I actually, while you were talking, I had to look up, I highlighted something that I thought was just so profound. He was reading a history and the author said, well, it's up to the readers to make their own judgment. And you say up to the readers or he's thinking...

Edward is astonished, like astounded. How can a reader, and I love how you put in these, like, you make it sound like the vernacular, you throw in those words, which I really like. But he said, how can a reader judge history? It's like a reader judging God. History is what happened. Nothing can change it.

But some dead historians have lied or guessed, and now nobody knows what's true. The fragility of the past horrifies him. And I thought that was really profound as I was reading that. And it just captures, makes me think about even these mysteries of who Lambert Simnel even was. We don't know. And does it matter really when what we tell ourselves, like the identity that we get from what we've told ourselves about it? I was finding myself going on some philosophical tangents there. I bet you did when you were writing it as well.

Yes, yeah. I'm glad that it spoke to you in that way. I think, yeah, there's a lot with his identity. It's

And yeah, I'm not sure what thread to pick up on with this. I know. But just the fragility of the past, like that quote has really stuck at me is, you know, we have a different view now of the Tudors than the Victorians did. And in another hundred years, people will have a different view of the Tudors than we do now. And everything, like it's always a way of a different view of the Romans. Everything has a different view of everything. And is there any truth? And it's

was just taking me into a deep tangent or a deep rabbit hole. And that's the thing. You kind of think about this endlessly, can't you? We really color the paths with our own where we're at at that point in time. And yes, I actually had a part in the book that I took out because we kind of, my editors and I agreed with them. Maybe it was an early read. I can't remember. But there was a part where they were talking about the Romans and how different the Romans were to them.

And then they were saying about people in 500 years time, what they'll be like. And yeah, we felt like that was just a little bit too much breaking the fourth wall kind of thing. So we took it out. But it's a fun thought experiment.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I'm going to let in Rebecca Larson has come in as well. She has a fantastic podcast, Tudor's Dynasty. Maybe you're going to be on her show too. But anyway, she's just coming. I'm going to let her in. Hi, Rebecca. So Lambert is obviously this historical mystery. There's arguments about who he was. There's some historians who even have an idea that maybe he was actually Edward V. And there was like this mix up in how they were referring to him in the writings.

And he was claiming to be Edward V, not Edward Earl of Warwick. There's so many different ideas about him. And I just wonder, how did you decide which version of his story to tell? And there's all of this debate about it. How did you really decide which story to tell?

Yeah, it was interesting. So obviously, when I got into it, I kind of thought, I approached it from the perspective that yes, he is a straight fake. They obviously found this kid somewhere and they trained him up and that it was as simple as that. And I kind of had a plot based off that preconception.

But then when I researched it, I found the situation was a lot more ambiguous. There's a real problem with the sources of that time. Like they are super patchy compared to later eras. And they're obviously profoundly partisan. It's, you know, most of it is propaganda from one side or another.

The Edward V thing is a really strange one. I didn't really find anything that kind of made me feel that he was really put forward as Edward V. It's a theory that Matthew Lewis has. Oh, okay. Yeah. There was like a TV show over here that sort of put that forward. So, I mean, Edward V was nearly five years older. Also, like the chroniclers, the English chroniclers, they're

You know, they say he was the Earl of Warwick, the Jean Molinet, the Burgundian chronicler. He said he was the Earl of Warwick. I think it's, yeah, I feel like that was the more convincing thing for me. The Edward V, there was a TV show over here where basically it was, and I think because it's TV, they have to make it exciting. Like we've got this scoop on the real identity of Lambert, Simnol and, you know, Perkin Warbeck.

And they had to kind of make it seem like they had something. And so I watched it like, oh, my God. You know, also, I was in the middle of writing at this point. And I was like, is this going to overturn everything I've written already? But yeah, it didn't really have much new stuff. I think there was like a receipt or something. Was this the one that they thought that they found the proof that Edward had? So like that was on like a year ago on Channel 4? Yes. Yes. I can't remember the names of the people. It kind of they set it up. It was evidence in a court case. That was kind of the shtick.

And yeah, I watched it with interest. It wasn't really my kind of show, I think. I was looking for something a bit more, maybe more academic, I guess. But, you know, that was my fault because obviously it's popular TV. It's got to be flashy. Yeah, it's sort of the evidence wasn't compelling. It didn't really change anything that I thought. I don't think it's really kind of, you know, caused much noise at sort of academic level, I guess.

um but yeah it's it's always good to kind of keep reassessing I think like you don't want to get too wedded to anyone you know yeah patient um so yeah I'd like to keep an open mind but that wasn't yeah so I knew you had him not knowing for like not being told that he was that he was this person and not knowing his whole identity and all of that like how did you decide how to how to position his his thoughts about it um was that

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is a fake, he thinks, he's told that he isn't, and he believes them. And then, yeah, obviously this all changes again. But then when I was researching, I found out, and this is the really fascinating thing that I think would be something I would like to watch on TV, that his father, the Duke of Clarence, actually did try to swap him as a baby with a common-born child. Like, he had fallen out with the king at that point, he's the king's brother,

They had a really acrimonious relationship. Clarence was maybe rightly, maybe wrongly paranoid. And yeah, he he concocted this scheme to send his infant son away and for his own safety. And this was kind of brought up in his when he was executed treason. And they said that, you know, they got two of his men and they confessed to being part of this scheme. They said it didn't actually work out. They never did swap the baby, but then they kind of would say that.

because their lives got spared. They're not going to say, oh yeah, we completely pulled it off and there's this kid out there who's a threat to the throne. So, you know, that whole, that really made it quite murky. So I was like, okay, I'm not going to, I'm going to change the direction of the writing. I'm going to change the plot and bring in more ambiguity because I was feeling like there is more ambiguity to this. So yeah, that was the direction I chose to go in, in the end.

Yeah. Interesting. And I guess I, I wonder also, let's see, I'm looking through my questions there because we talked and we were going, we touched on some here earlier. Yeah. Like John Colin, who then becomes Lambert Seminole, he's caught in this world between being a pawn and a possible Prince. Like how did you develop his perspective to reflect that tension? Yeah.

Yeah, so I think he kind of, he basically goes through a lot of development as the book goes on.

from porn to Prince. So when we first meet him, he is just a farm boy. His biggest challenge is this bad-tempered goat that lives on his farm and keeps trying to bully him. And there's a very simple existence. And then obviously one day these mysterious noblemen turn up and tell him that, you know, he's actually a noble himself and it's time for him to leave behind everything he knows and go and meet his destiny.

And he's kind of a bit excited, but also terrified. And then there's another shift. He gets to Oxford where he's going to be tutored by this priest who doesn't really like him all that much. And so this is kind of

At that point, it's just a bit of a, he's lonely. It's a slog. He misses his family. And even though he does believe that they're right and that he is an Earl, because why would he doubt what a noble tells him? Like, you know, his social training has, you know, conditioned him to just accept this. He believes he's an Earl, but also he wants to run away. And then he, another huge change is when he gets to Mechelen, he gets swept off to Europe.

And at this point, he's just completely terrified and he's in survival mode, trying to navigate, as we talked about, the complex. The world. Yeah. But he's also just starting to get a little bit used to it. Like he is learning their ways. At first, it's terrifying having gentlemen dress him in the morning and then he kind of starts to expect it. So, you know, the food is great when he finally gets to eat it.

But yeah, so he's adjusting. And then there's another shift where he goes to Ireland. And this is where he meets Joan, who's the daughter of the Earl of Kildare, Gerald Fitzgerald. He's known as the Great Earl, the uncrowned king of Ireland. And Joan is like, she's really savvy, borderline sociopathic. And she's the first person who actually parks the seed of doubt in his mind as to whether he is in fact Kildare.

Edward Earl of Warwick, just by asking him, like, do you believe what they've told you? And this hadn't occurred to him before, to not believe it. So, yeah. And then this sets him off on a path of, in the later stages of the novel, trying, you know, wondering and questioning the truth of his story really is. Yeah. Yeah. His story is often overshadowed by Perkin Warbeck later, who tends to get more attention and

when people are looking at this, it just seems like something that people pay more attention to. And I just wonder if you have any thoughts about how Lambert, if you have thoughts about Perkin-Warbeck as well, and just how Lambert-Simnel relates to Perkin-Warbeck and just the two of them together, what are some similarities that you see between the two of them? Yeah, it's really interesting. It's, I mean, afterwards, sort of,

encountered Lambert I did look into Perkin Warbeck and I was like oh god should I be writing about him um but actually like his story didn't really speak to me in the same way and I think um I think it's because we know more about him um he's much more documented like there are things that survive um the you know are pretty plausibly written by him like his own account of himself is out there um

That was being put forward by Margaret of Burgundy and other people on his side. And, you know, we know the full story of his life, so we don't know his origins. But, you know, we know about all his invasion attempts, like his capture and then later his long imprisonment and wretched death.

So that's, you know, his tale is told and there isn't that much, aside from like who he really was, there isn't that much room for doubt or, you know, invention. Whereas with Lambert, it's obviously he's equally mysterious as to where he came from and what he is. But he falls off the page of history while he's still very young and there was absolutely nothing else on him. And I thought that was really appealing because

And again, I think this is personal. Like, I love Lambert because maybe because I'm a writer, other people might find Perkin Warwick far more interesting. But for me, I was stuck to history where history was available. But then, yeah, there was this whole space at the end where I could just

what Lambert was doing. And that was a really interesting place to be as well, because it's the first time that after his invasion attempt fails, he now has a chance at kind of thinking for himself and acting for himself. And I just had so much I wanted to do with that potential. And I was able to do that with his story. Yeah, yeah, that's really, there's a lot there that can be filled. I can imagine that kind of blank canvas, that feeling of like a picture that can just paint things in.

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Do you see any parallels between like resonance in today's world is thinking about these themes of like identity, power, manipulation, these themes that run through Lambert's symbol story, any modern parallels to why it might still be so compelling for us today?

Yeah, I think there were quite a few. So in terms of power, like, I think power then functioned a lot like power now. You know, we think of it as, oh, kings had divine right, they were appointed by God, no one questioned them. But actually that really wasn't so much the case. Like, power came down not only to who was strongest, but who was most popular. A king had to kind of please and appease his nobles and his people. Well, he did find himself dead quite quickly. So, and Henry actually was

he was full of parallels to the modern era because he, he was tenuous. He struggled at the time. So because he was seen as not really having the bloodlines or, you know, the legitimate birth that he should have had to sort of, sorry, he was legitimate, but further back in his history, connection to the throne came from a sort of bit of a sketchy offshoot. Catherine Swinford and the Beaufort family. Yes, exactly. So, um,

Yeah, so he basically knew that he was not seen as a really viable king and that there was a lot of challenge to him. So he basically went big on branding.

um he he and also he didn't have a huge amount of personality to fall back on so he really was like a charisma free kind of don draper um marketing himself for people so he for one he tied himself into the Arthurian legend which people then took as fact um so he he claimed he was descendant of Arthur like he was fulfilling the kind of prophecies about Arthur named his son Arthur um

And kind of really played into that with pageantry and, you know, the official poetry of the time and stuff.

And also he downplayed Elizabeth of York, who was, you know, a legitimate straight, you know, straight down from the royal line, a lot more kind of right to the throne than he did. So he sort of pushed her into the background and said that it was by right of war that he had the throne and by victory on the battlefield and not by marriage, basically. And at the same time, he took her emblem, the York Rose, and basically amalgamated it into...

this like, yeah, really iconic image, the Tudor rose, which married the York and Lancaster red and white. So he was just so like, he was a real early master of like the dark arts of PR and branding. And because he needed to be so that was a real, yeah, parallel with with modern era that I found really fascinating.

Interesting. Interesting. Hey, Rebecca and Mary, if either of you have questions that you want to ask, just pop them in the chat or you can unmute yourself. We're in like the last five minutes here. So feel free to do that. So if you could go back in time and ask Lambert Seminole one question, what would you ask him?

Oh, at what point in his life would I be asking after it's all over? Anytime. Anytime. Okay. I think I'd go, I'd find him as like a 40 year old and say, what are you doing now? Like, where are you? And yeah, I would really like to know. Okay. Okay. Interesting. Interesting. While you were doing this, did you find any other historical figures that you would like to write about?

Oh, yeah, quite a few. So I actually, I'm working on a second historical at the moment. So it's basically, it's not going to be exactly the same world as Lambert, but it will be the same era. So, but it will be London based this time and it will be a female as the lead. And the historical figure is probably going to pop up most significantly. I really created another world for my own back with research here. I've got my character going off to medieval Spain.

where she's going to encounter the Catholic monarchs, or actually not Isabella, because Isabella is dead at this point, but she will meet their daughter, Juana La Loca, who was famously seen as a mad queen. She wasn't really mad. She had a lot against her.

and is an absolutely fascinating person. But it will have some characters in common with this. So obviously, Wanner was married to Philip, who is in this book, Philip the Archduke. The young one, yeah. So yeah, there'll be some crossover, but not the same cast exactly. Interesting. Okay, cool. Well...

If, like I said, Mary and Rebecca, if you have anything, just feel free to pop it in. But I will just, I guess, wrap this up because I want to be mindful of the time unless there's anything else. But I just, I really, I just really loved your writing. It really spoke to me. It was just really poetic. So it was, I've always loved Haruki Murakami and say that his writing is like chocolate and I just like, just read it very slowly and devour it. And I was finding myself doing that with this, like going back and reading passages over and over again. So yeah.

Thank you for your creation with that. It was just gorgeous. Thank you. I'm glad. I think a lot of that is due to like the richness of the medieval language. And yeah, that was really fun to kind of play with and try to, as you mentioned earlier, like introduce elements of the words they would have used. So I'm glad you enjoyed it. Yeah. And just a stream of consciousness of some of the thinking of Lambert and John Cullen. And I love the battles with the goats and everything like that. Thank you so much.

And yeah, well, hopefully when you have your next novel, since it's this period, we can have you back and have you chat a little bit more. Where can people go to find a plug your website? Obviously your books. Tell me where people can go to follow you.

I'm actually, embarrassingly, not really online. I don't have a website or a social media presence. So you can't find me. Well done, you. Congratulations. It's pretty good. Like, yeah, I didn't do it for mental health reasons, but I've noticed quite a few like beneficial effects. So, yeah, it's been great.

Yeah, but your other book then is Tell Me an Ending about the memory, memory removal as well. So people can get that too. Like I said, that's on my wishlist now. So yeah, thank you for taking the time and for being with me. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me. It's really kind of you and I pretty enjoyed it.

All right. Thank you so much to Joe Harkin for taking the time to stop by and chat. The Pretender is coming out in April. It is fabulous. I have read it. It's just, it was a delight to read. I really enjoyed it. So check that out. And also I have her other book, like I said in the interview, Tell Me An Ending on my wishlist right now to read as well. So I've become a fan.

Again, if you want to attend these chats live, just go to patreon.com slash englandcast and join as a patron. Or you can click join this channel if you are listening to this on YouTube. All right. Thank you so much for being here, friend. Thanks to Joe Harkin again. And I will be back soon.

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