Product Code Database
Kenneth Martin Follett (born 5 June 1949) is a Welsh author of thrillers and historical novels who has sold more than 198 million copies of his works. His books have been sold in over 80 countries.
Follett's commercial breakthrough came with the spy thriller Eye of the Needle (1978). After writing more best-sellers in the genre in the 1980s, he branched into historical fiction with The Pillars of the Earth (1989), an Epic novel set in medieval England which became his best-known work and the first published in the Kingsbridge series. He has continued to write in both genres, including the Century Trilogy. Many of his books have achieved high ranking on bestseller lists, including the number-one position on the New York Times Best Seller list.
In 1967, he was admitted to University College London, where he studied philosophy and became active in centre-left politics. He married Mary in 1968, and their son, Emanuele, was born the same year. After graduating in 1970, he completed a three-month postgraduate journalism course and began working as a trainee reporter for his hometown newspaper the South Wales Echo in Cardiff. In 1973, his daughter, Marie-Claire, was born.
Each of Follett's subsequent novels has become a best-seller, ranking high on the New York Times Best Seller list; a number have been adapted for the screen. As of January 2018, he had published 44 books. The first five best sellers were spy thrillers: Eye of the Needle (1978), Triple (1979), The Key to Rebecca (1980), The Man from St. Petersburg (1982) and Lie Down with Lions (1986). On Wings of Eagles (1983) was the true story of how two of Ross Perot's employees were rescued from Iran during the revolution of 1979. The next three novels, Night Over Water (1991), A Dangerous Fortune (1993) and A Place Called Freedom (1995) were more historical than thriller, but he returned to the thriller genre with The Third Twin (1996) which in the Publishing Trends annual survey of international fiction best-sellers for 1997 was ranked no. 2 worldwide, after John Grisham's The Partner. His next work, The Hammer of Eden (1998), was another contemporary suspense story followed by a Cold War thriller, Code to Zero (2000).
Follett returned to the Second World War era with his next two novels, Jackdaws (2001), a thriller about a group of women parachuted into France to destroy a vital telephone exchange – which won the Corine Literature Prize for 2003 – and Hornet Flight (2002), about a daring young Denmark couple who escape to Britain from occupied Denmark in a rebuilt Hornet Moth biplane with vital information about German radar. Whiteout (2004) is a contemporary thriller about the theft of a deadly virus from a research lab.
Its much-later sequel, World Without End (2007), returns to Kingsbridge 157 years later, and features the descendants of the characters in Pillars. It focuses on the destinies of a handful of people as their lives are devastated by the Black Death, the plague that swept Europe from the middle of the 14th century.
The next novel in the series is A Column of Fire (2017). Beginning in 1558, the story follows the romance between Ned Willard and Margery Fitzgerald over half a century. It commences at a time when Europe turns against Elizabethan England, and the queen finds herself beset by plots to dethrone her.
A fourth novel, The Evening and the Morning (2020), is a prequel to The Pillars of the Earth. Set in the decade around 1000 AD – in the so-called Dark Ages – the story "concerns the gradual creation of the town of Kingsbridge and of the many people – priests, nobles, peasants, the enslaved – who played significant roles". As such, the book provides "a solid underpinning to the later installments of the Kingsbridge series".
A fifth novel, The Armour of Light (2023), is set in 1792, around the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The book explores the societal upheaval following the invention of the Spinning jenny in 1770. Set against the backdrop of Napoleonic wars and economic transformation, it follows interconnected characters: a widow coping with her husband’s death in a factory accident, a young woman funding a school for impoverished children, a man inheriting a failing business, and a wealthy industrialist protecting his fortune at all costs. Amid war and social change, the story examines the human cost of progress and the struggle to rebuild a fractured world.
The series has been described as being "as comprehensive an account of the building of a civilization – with its laws, structures, customs and beliefs – as you are likely to encounter anywhere in popular fiction".
Winter of the World (2012) picks up where the first book left off, as its five interrelated families enter a time of enormous social, political, and economic turmoil, beginning with the rise of Nazi Germany, through the Spanish Civil War and the great dramas of World War II, to the explosions of the American and Soviet atom bombs and the beginning of the long Cold War.
The final novel in the 'Century' trilogy, Edge of Eternity, which follows those families through the events of the second half of the 20th century, was published on 16 September 2014. Like the previous two books, it chronicles the lives of five families through the Cold War and civil-rights movements.
A major element of the first two volumes, Fall of Giants and Winter of the World, is the increasing political assertiveness of the British working class and the rise of the British Labour Party – exemplified by the Williams Family, Welsh coal miners, of which several viewpoint characters end up as Members of the British Parliament and one of them becomes a cabinet minister in Clement Attlee's post-WWII Labour government. However, the theme of British politics is nearly absent from the third part Edge of Eternity, which concentrates on the Cold War on the one hand and the US Civil Rights Movement on the other; for example, though the novel continues until 1989, it makes no reference at all to the rise of Margaret Thatcher in 1979.
A video game adaptation titled Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth, developed and published by German studio Daedalic Entertainment, was released in three parts from 2017 to 2018.
Follett had cameo roles as the valet in The Third Twin and later as a merchant in The Pillars of the Earth. In 2016, A Dangerous Fortune was also adapted.
Pillars of the Earth and A Column of Fire have both been adapted into Danish-language musicals. Pillars of the Earth had its world premiere October 12, 2016 at Østre Gasværk Teater, Copenhagen. A Column of Fire had its world premiere in 2019 at Bellevue Teatret, Klampenborg. Both of the musicals were written by Thomas Høg, Lasse Aagaard, and Sune Svanekier.
He is active in numerous Stevenage charities and was a governor of Roebuck Primary School for ten years, serving as the Chair of Governors for four of those years.
On 15 September 2010, Follett, along with 54 other public figures, signed an open letter published in The Guardian stating their opposition to Pope Benedict XVI's state visit to the UK.
He has also donated £25,000 to the Yvette Cooper campaign in the 2015 Labour Party (UK) leadership election, as well as another £25,000 from his wife Barbara Follett.
Follett's archival papers are housed at the Saginaw Valley State University in Michigan, United States. They include outlines, first drafts, notes and correspondence, original manuscripts, and copies of early books now out of print.
Ken Follett has cited The Cruel Sea by Nicholas Monsarrat as his favorite book, praising its realistic depiction of naval warfare and its exploration of human endurance during World War II.
During university, Follett rebelled against his parents' "puritanical faith" and became an atheist. As of 2022, he is "still an atheist, but I do have a spiritual life".
He is an amateur musician playing bass guitar for Damn Right I Got the Blues, and appears occasionally with the folk group Clog Iron playing a bass balalaika.
Follett lives in Hertfordshire, England with his wife Barbara. Ken Follett Biography. Book Reporter, 2021.
Kingsbridge series
The Century Trilogy
Standalone novels
Non-fiction
|
|
