Wolf Hall meets Demon Copperhead in a sharply ambitious, brilliantly imagined and hugely entertaining story of intrigue, deceit, revenge and ambition-The Pretender has everything: history richly drawn, amazing characterisation, humour, wit, vigour and bravery. It's magnificent- Emma Stonex________________________________________Kill the pretender. Do not let it be known that there was a pretender to kill. The year is 1480 and England is in peril. The much-despised Richard III is not long for the throne, and the man who will become Henry VII stands poised to snatch the crown for himself. But for twelve-year-old John Collan, living in a remote village with his widowed father, these matters seem far away. But history has other plans for John. Stolen from his family, exiled - first to Oxford, then to Burgundy, and then Ireland - and apprenticed to a series of unscrupulous political operators, he finds himself groomed for power; not as John Collan, but as Edward Plantagenet, 17th Earl of Wa
