Ken Follett in Canton Library, Cardiff

For this first ever episode of Ex Libris, host Ben Holden met up with one of the most formidable storytellers of our age.

More than 160 million copies of Ken Follett’s books have been sold to date worldwide.

Ben spoke with Ken and Rhian Jones, Senior Librarian, in Ken’s childhood library in Canton, Cardiff.  This glorious Carnegie library was a hugely formative place for Ken as a kid: ‘I didn’t have many books of my own and I’ve always been grateful for the public library. Without free books I would not have become a voracious reader, and if you are not a reader you are not a writer.’

Ken was twenty-seven when he wrote Eye of the Needle, an award-winning thriller that became an international bestseller. He then surprised everyone with The Pillars of the Earth, about the building of a cathedral in the Middle Ages. The novel continues to captivate readers all over the world. Its sequels World Without End and A Column of Fire were both number one bestsellers in the US, UK and Europe. His many other novels include the bestselling Century trilogy, which comprises Fall of Giants, Winter of the World and Edge of Eternity.

His newest book is a tribute to Paris’ Notre-Dame. Entitled A Short History of the Meaning of Cathedrals, it was published on 29 October, 2019 and prompted for this inaugural episode of Ex Libris a very cool exploration of the parallels between cathedrals and libraries - these sacred spaces that best express our shared humanity - as well as Ex Libris staples such as Ken's writing process, how he orders his own library and, to round the conversation off, a browse of those library shelves he used to plunder as a child, back in the day, so that he can pick out a book to take home...

 

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Please find below a full transcript of Episode 1:  Ken Follett 

Welcome to Ex Libris, the podcast that, with the help of the greatest writers around, champions libraries and bookshops. These are our society’s safe spaces, particularly libraries - they are palaces for the people; they are free of charge, and places where everyone is welcome and nobody judged, yet they are in peril.  My name is Ben Holden, writer and producer, and, more to the point, fed up with this state of affairs, so in each episode of Ex Libris, I will be meeting an author in a library or bookshop of their choice, somewhere that has become resonant for them, and I hope that after you have listened to this episode, it will feel special to you too.

 

Introduction

 

Ben Holden: 

Here we are, appropriately enough, on Library Street. The sun is shining on us today.  I am about to meet up with one of the most formidable storytellers of our age.  Bold claim? Not really, when you consider that his books have sold an astonishing 160 million copies - you can’t argue with that!

 

Ken Follett has come a long way from his childhood home here in Cardiff.  In many ways, that journey towards becoming one of the world’s most successful writers began right here, in the very handsome library after which this road is named.  What say we venture inside the splendid ‘Canton Library’, where senior librarian, Rhian Jones, is waiting for us.  Lets get talking with Ken Follett.

 

Interview

 

Ben Holden:

Ken, thank you so much for joining us.  Ken, this is your childhood library, but I have to ask, of all the bookshops and libraries in the world, you immediately chose this one.  Can you tell us why and describe the place a little for our listeners?

 

Ken Follett:

Well, I was seven years old when I joined this library.  I learned to read early and effortlessly, and it became a huge pleasure for me, and that’s partly because some of the regular pleasures were denied me.  My family, for puritanical reasons, didn’t go to the theatres or movies; we didn’t have a TV; we didn’t go to football matches, and so, really, reading was the only pleasure that was allowed.  So, I read a lot and quickly, and books were expensive.  My family wasn't particularly poor, but a book was either two and six or five shillings, and young families in the 1950s in Britain did not have much disposable income, so I would get books for my birthday and Christmas, and that was the only time people got me books.  And then I discovered this place.  Free books, unlimited free books forever.  It was like Christmas every day! The first big thrill of my life was joining this library.

 

Ben Holden:

I’m interested to know why, in your very religious home and upbringing, why you had carte blanche to read whatever you liked, even though it was very confined in terms of the music you listened to?  I know you read the Bible, or were made to read the Bible, no bad thing as you’ve pointed out, to get to know it, but you could read whatever you liked, there were no restrictions there for you?

 

Ken Follett:

It's very strange...There was nothing in the children’s library that could corrupt me, really.  But, I got to the age of 12, by which time we moved to London, where there was a different public library, and I started to read James Bond, and looking back, I cannot understand why they permitted that - they may have thought that anything in print was ok.  I don’t know, my parents are dead, so I can’t ask them.  But even then, when I was 12, I was allowed in the adult library, which was in a suburb of London called Kenton, and, theoretically, they were supposed to check what I was reading, but they didn’t, and I was reading James Bond, and boy did I like James Bond!

 

Ben Holden:

Rhian, could you talk to the history of this place?  It is a beautiful building.

 

Rhian Jones:

It is a beautiful, absolutely stunning building.  The philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie, donated the money for the library, I think a lot, around £5000 at the time, and it’s built on an old market.  There are two Carnegie libraries in the area, and they opened on the same day.  They opened the Cathays library first, then came down by tram to open this one up.  Like you say, it’s a free library and Carnegie was inspired because he had the barrier of not being able to afford membership, and when he got wealthy, he promised that he would give the children, boys and girls, the ability to enter the world of books.

 

Ben Holden:

For any listeners who don’t know much about Andrew Carnegie, he built 3000 libraries - 660 in the UK, 24 in Wales, and others extended to Fiji and South Africa. Notably, he gave away 90% of his wealth.  He was known as a ruthless man - ruthless in business, but equally ruthless in philanthropy.  He’s still regarded as the greatest philanthropist ever, and, he said, this stemmed from his childhood.  He said that:

“If ever wealth came to me, it should be used to establish free libraries, so that other poor boys have opportunities similar to those for which we were indebted to that noble man.”

This noble man was called Colonel Anderson, who would open up his home every weekend, and Carnegie was among the girls and boys who would choose a book amongst the 400 books.  And he (Carnegie) said he had an intense longing for a new book, and each weekend would bring a new book, and he revelled in those treasures.

And Ken, you’ve said you didn’t have money for books of your own and that:  “without free books, I wouldn’t have become a voracious reader; and without books, you are not a writer”.  This Carnegie legacy really was huge for you and very much in keeping with what he was trying to do.

 

Ken Follett:

Yes absolutely, I was in Reims in France a few weeks ago, and I saw this very big library and I said, I bet that’s a Carnegie library. The library is in an art deco building - this is a Victorian building that we’re in now.  And we went over and looked, and there’s a plaque saying in French that this is paid for by Andrew Carnegie. 

When you first sit down to write a short story as an adult, I found that I already knew 90% of what I needed to know about writing a novel, because I had read so many from such a young age. All the writers I know are the same; they were all voracious readers from a young age. That’s how you learn what a sentence, a paragraph, a chapter is - you learn how to describe landscapes, buildings; you learn about cliff-hangers and stories.  As you’re writing as a novelist, you remember things that delighted you in novels that you read, and you think, “I must do that”; “I must do surprises, cliff-hangers, suspense, and describe things that not only tell you what they look like, but what they feel like, and what the atmosphere is like”.  You get this because you read novels.

Books costing what they did, and the average family income of the 1950s, I wouldn’t have read all of these books if it wasn’t for the library.

 

Ben Holden:

And it is a very welcoming sanctuary. It’s very light, as you pointed out.

 

Ken Follett:

It is now; it was very forbidding in the 1950s.  It’s a Victorian building, and it wasn’t particularly light.  And there were notices up saying, “No talking”. I don’t think they encouraged toddlers.  I think I was pretty young to start at seven.  I think the campaign to get people reading younger was unknown then. In fact, my love of books was considered a possible health hazard.  Doctors were saying to me, “Do you go out and play, as well as reading all of these books?”, and, of course, I did, but the ethos that we have now, that children must be introduced to pictures and books and words as early as possible, I don’t think that existed in the 1950s.

 

Ben Holden:

Although it may have been a bit gloomy then, I know that in one of the first Carnegie libraries opened, in Dunfermline, there was a sign saying, ‘Let there be light!’ on the door, and he (Carnegie) wanted these places to engender enlightenment, and they were generally constructed with high windows, vaulted ceilings, and ornate designs.  The architectural style, of course, varies with the area, in keeping with community, and they often have lights outside as well.  But, when I was arriving here earlier, having not been here before, I thought it was a church at first, as it looks like a very beautiful neo-gothic church. And, of course, this leads us into your newest work which is about Notre Dame. This is a concise, very elegant, and I have to say, thrilling journey that you paint; we go inside and outside Notre Dame.  Perhaps you could kindly read a short passage, Ken, and we can talk a bit more about it?

 

Ken Follett:

“The cathedral of Notre Dame was too small in 1163.  The population of Paris was growing.  On the right bank of the river, commerce was surging to levels unknown in the rest of medieval Europe, and, on the left bank, the university was attracting students from many countries.  Between the two, on an island in the river, stood the cathedral and Bishop Maurice de Sully felt it should be bigger.  And, there was something else.  The existing building was in the round-arched style we call romanesque, but there was an exciting, new architectural movement that used pointed arches, letting more light into the building, a look now called gothic.  This style had been pioneered only six miles from Notre Dame, at the Abbey Church of Saint-Denis, burial place of the French Kings, which had brilliantly combined several technical and visual innovations.  As well as the pointed arch, it featured piers of clustered shafts, sprouting ribs up into a high vault that was lighter in weight, a semi-circular walkway at the eastern end to keep pilgrims moving past the relics of Saint-Denis, and outside, graceful flying buttresses that facilitated larger windows, and made the massive church look as if it were about to take flight.  Sully must have seen the new church of Saint-Denis and become enamoured of it.  No doubt, it made Notre Dame look old fashioned.  Perhaps, he was even a little jealous of Abbot Suger at Saint-Denis who had encouraged two successive master masons to experiment boldly with triumphantly successful results.  So, Sully ordered his cathedral to be knocked down and replaced by a gothic church”.

 

Ben Holden:

Thank you.  I have to say, what is great about this pithy new book is that all the proceeds go to the charity, ‘Fondation du patrimoine’.  Writing in this concise way about the Notre Dame construction and legacy, understandably, being written by you, it has the same narrative eye for detail that you deploy in your novel, ‘Pillars of the Earth’.  I’m curious, how did you hear about the fire?

 

Ken Follett:

April 15th, I was at home in the kitchen with Barbara, my wife, and we had just finished supper, and the phone rang and it was an old friend, in fact it was Yvette Cooper, who is an old friend and political ally of Barbara’s.  She said, “I’m in Paris, turn on the TV”, and, of course, we did, and you know what we saw, and we saw the great cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris in flames.  It was a terrible, shocking moment. She said it was on fire, but that could have meant anything.  It was terrible.  I spent the evening watching TV, but also following on social media, and I realised the journalists covering this for TV and radio didn’t know what was burning.  In fact, one of them asked a question - “It’s a stone building - how can it be on fire?” - and I knew the answer,  because whilst researching the ‘Pillars of the Earth’, I’d gone up into the roofs of cathedrals.  In fact, in the ‘Pillars of the Earth’, the old cathedral burns. So, I had invented a fictional fire in the ‘Pillars of the Earth’, so I knew how it could happen, so I tweeted very simply what was happening - that the roof timbers were on fire.  You’ve probably seen in the roof of your own house, there are horizontal rafters and roof beams, so it was clear to me that was what was burning.

 

Ben Holden:

So, you knew what would be occurring in there because of your research - you’d effectively written it in a fictional sense.

 

Ken Follett:

Yes exactly right.  Then, of course, once the massive timbers have burned and begin to weaken, that’s when the actual roof begins to collapse, and, in the case of Notre Dame, it’s made of red tiles, and all of that debris collapses and falls through the ceiling - the curved, vaulted ceiling of cathedral. When you’re standing in the nave and looking up, you see those ribs, and the triangles in-between the ribs, well, of course, when the leads and burning timbers fall on that, they crash through and then may then destroy the pillars.  I guess, I was the first person to say that in a clear way.  However, many people know more about cathedrals than I do!

 

Ben Holden:

Well, you say that, but I know that you were invested as an officer (Ordre) des Arts et des Lettres prior to this.  Of course, you are being modest, but you are a world authority on cathedrals, and correct me if I’m wrong, there is a statue of you outside of the cathedral of Santa Maria? I think you’re perfectly positioned to speak to it, also as a storyteller, someone who has lived and breathed the process as we’ve heard in your extract and the way you’re talking about it, immediately seeing how this was unfolding in a forensic way, you became a spokesman or interpreter for people watching this around the world, didn't you?

 

Ken Follett:

Yes, first of all, explaining what I’ve just explained about the fire, but also, of course, which I thought about a lot when I was writing ‘Pillars of the Earth’, was the meaning of cathedrals to us, spiritually.  I’m very interested in them materially, very interested in how they were built, and how the masons worked, and where the money came from.  But, there is something else, the enterprise of building one of these great churches was not merely a material thing.  I’ve compared the building of a cathedral to a Moonshot partly because, although everything technical about a Moonshot is fascinating and it’s leading edge technology and costs a fortune, ultimately there is not enough motivation to go to the moon.  Ultimately, we don’t do it because of the technical advances it brings, ultimately we do it because human beings have to reach out like that to something special, not just materials.  I believe that’s what they were doing when they were building cathedrals, as well as creating a building that would be used as a conference centre and tourist attraction.  Medieval people also had the sense that we have, that we want to reach for something that is beyond the material life.

 

Ben Holden:

Some of this must come from the upbringing around the corner from here and the religiosity of that?

 

Ken Follett:

It must, mustn’t it?

 

Ben Holden:

It must have been, because you describe it so vividly as an emotional moment, and you said Notre Dame must have seemed eternal.  Having thought so much and having visited so many cathedrals, there must have been something.  Actually, in ‘The Column of Fire’, the third novel in the Kingsbridge series, when Ned Willard, the lead protagonist returns home, and I’ll read short paragraph...

“He looked out of the parlour window across the market square to the elegant facade of the great church, with its long lines of lancet windows and pointed arches.  It had been there everyday of his life, only the sky above it changed with the seasons.  It gave him a vague but powerful sense of reassurance.  People were born and died, cities could rise and fall, wars began and ended, but Kingsbridge cathedral would last until the day of judgement”. 

 

Ben Holden:

That must have been a nightmarish sight. The nightmare of something that is not possible is coming true.

 

Ken Follett:

Yes, people feel it in an earthquake.  How can the earth be moving when the earth is one thing that is always still?  It’s that kind of feeling, allegorically, as well as really.  The ground beneath your feet seems to be moving when a fire like that burns.

 

Ben Holden:

Of course, there have been fires which have ravaged libraries, most famously the Alexandrian library.  There’s a wonderful book by Susan Orlean which came out earlier this year called ‘The Library Book’ which explores a big fire in an LA public library in the 1980s, which was the biggest fire in the states.  Over 400,000 books were lost, and she explores libraries through the prism of the fire.  I understand there was a fire here as well Rhian?

 

Rhian Jones:

Yes, somebody broke in and tried to steal a computer and was unsuccessful, and burned the place down, and went to prison for it.

 

Ben Holden:

When was that?

 

Rhian Jones:

I think it was in the 1990s.

 

Ben Holden:

There are few signs of this outside which you pointed out - remnants of where the building has now been renovated.

 

Rhian Jones:

Yes, it has changed from the original features, but the Council did an amazing job, and poured lots of money into it.

 

Ben Holden:

And Ken, what do you make of Notre Dame and the fire? What do you make of the plans and the reconstruction, the aftermath? There has been some controversy in France.  As you pointed out in the book, Macron decrees it should take five years - what do you make of the plans now?

 

 

Ken Follett:

Well, I was privileged to go inside Notre Dame a few weeks ago and interview the architect, Philippe Villeneuve, who’s in charge of the reconstruction.  What they’re doing at the moment is, you can see now actually from the outside that they’re putting in timber reinforcements under flying buttresses and in window spaces. If they don’t do that, then structure will move, because all the stresses have changed; because the roof is now not pressing down on the walls, the buttresses press walls inwards to balance the weight of the roof, but now that the roof has gone, they would move the walls - the walls would tilt inwards, and so they have to be braced.  All of those empty bits have got to be kept to their original shape until the rebuilding gets going.  It’s going to be a heck of a job to finish it in five years.  It was a wonderful moment, I thought, when the president of France said on TV that evening, on the 15th April,  “Nous rebâtirons!”, - “We will rebuild!”-, a moving, moving moment. 

The French are not like us, in that they don’t mind spending a fortune on public works.  You can tell if you drive around France and look at the viaducts and bridges and so on - just fantastic - if they want to do something like that, they’ll find the money.  They may yet do it, but it’s going to be difficult.  They will restore it almost 100% to what it was, but they’re talking about, and I think it’s quite nice, perhaps it will have one feature that’s completely modern - a bit like in the courtyard of the Louvre.  In all those 18th century and renaissance buildings, in the middle is the glass pyramid - it’s stunning and that’s a modern feature and that can work.

In fact, Viollet-le-Duc, when he restored Notre Dame in the 19th century, he built that very narrow spire that they call ‘La flèche’ - ‘the dart’ it means - and that really wasn’t medieval at all that spire, and so he added what was then something rather modern to his restoration of a medieval cathedral, and I think they’ll do something like that. It won’t be one of the bizarre ideas like putting a swimming pool on the roof or something like that, but there may be just one feature.  The one I like is the one in which they restore the spire, but have a laser beam going out of the top of it, a bright white laser beam going up ad infinitum into outer space, and I like that idea, because it’s not at all intrusive and it’s absolutely representative of the spirit of a cathedral - the reaching for the heavens of a cathedral.  That’s my favourite, but they haven’t decided and don’t need to decide for a few years, but I think we can be pretty sure that, by and large, it will look as near to the original as possible.

 

Ben Holden:

And all proceeds from the book will go towards that endeavour?

 

Ken Follett:

Well, that was the original idea; it was my French publisher’s idea, and she said we will give all the profits from the book to the rebuilding fund, and I said I will do the same with my royalties.  By the time I finished my book, the building fund already had a billion euros, and so, she said let’s give the money to the la Fondation du patrimoine, which gives money to all the ancient buildings in France, and so that’s what we’re doing.  And, in fact, I’m going to hand over a check for over 100,000 euros in about one month’s time, and that will just be the beginning, - there will be lots more, so all of those ancient buildings in France that I love to visit will get a little boost from my book.

 

Ben Holden:

And you’ve written that the cathedral is about what people can achieve when they work together.  Your obviously doing your part there, and then some.  You also write in the book about the cathedral’s visitors, be those tourists or yesteryears pilgrims travelling for the same reasons, which I was quite struck by, and you describe those as: 

“to see the world’s marvels, to broaden their minds, to educate themselves, and perhaps to come in touch with something miraculous, otherworldly, and eternal.” 

I’d like to think that libraries and cathedrals both can serve those purposes, and there is obviously, here, in this beautiful, quite church-like library, there is a lot of common ground between these institutions, these human monuments.

I can’t think of any other public edifices or expressions of the human spirit, or statements of intent by us as a species that work in the same sort of way, but maybe I’m missing something, as I’m very partisan about libraries.

 

Ken Follett:

Well, it’s very interesting you should say that.  You probably don’t remember that passage from the ‘Hunchback of Notre Dame’ in which Victor Hugo says the cathedral is a library.  For medieval people who could not read, they would go into the cathedral, and everywhere, there were images that told them stories, obviously abbreviated stories.  A cathedral is full of statues, painting, and sometimes, decorative fabrics that show you characters in the Bible - Adam and Eve, the serpent, and Noah, and all the prophets; and then, the new testament characters - Jesus and the disciples, and then the saints. 

And to us ignorant people in the 21st century, these statues all look the same, but there is an iconography to them, and if you look at the iconography, you know which saint is which.  Each of the saints has something in his hands which tells you which saint he is, and that would bring back to the people the story of that saint - usually the story of how that saint died. Saint Stephen is the saint who has an arrow sticking into him; Saint Jerome always has a book; Saint Peter has the keys, and so on.  So, the inside of a cathedral wasn't merely decorative.  All of those symbols would bring to many people’s minds the bible stories that they had heard.

 

Ben Holden:

Because both spaces are really about the exchange of ideas or stories down the ages, are shared histories, and being able to access them in a spiritual or mindful place, or space, interior or exterior.

 

Ken Follett:

It was like Stephen Hawking’s book, ‘A Brief History of Time’.  That tells you how the universe began, how it developed, how we came into it, and how it’s going to end.  And, of course, a bible story, as depicted in images in a great church, tells you the earlier version of how the universe began, how we came to be in it, and how it’s going to end.

 

Ben Holden:

If I may, I will read one further short segment of your work.  This is another little passage I was struck by in the context of this conversation.  This is from ‘Pillars of the Earth’, and you frame there one of the protagonist’s Tom’s love of cathedrals…

“The walls of a cathedral had to be not just good, but perfect.  This was because the cathedral was for God, and also because the building was so big that the slightest lean in the walls, the merest variation from the absolutely true and level, could weaken the structure, fatally”.

See Ken, I see you as the master builder, because what he is describing there, to me, sounds very similar to the architecture and devotion that you pour into your narratives, and the way you combine the granular and period details, and epic history, and romance and intrigue, and interpersonal conflicts, all played out through lifetimes, hopes and dreams - you’re a master builder yourself.

 

Ken Follett:

Well, it’s an interesting comparison, certainly.  I start with a plan, like a builder always does. Not all authors do that, but most authors say that they know the beginning and end of a story before they begin, but a lot of people say that how the story moves from the beginning to the end is something that they discover as they’re writing, and I’m not like that at all.  I spend a long time planning the architecture.

 

Ben Holden:

Because everything has to be in its perfect position, otherwise the whole will fall apart?

 

Ken Follett:

Yes, there’s a logic to a good story which is very similar to the principles of construction in a building. The walls have to be straight, otherwise they will fall down and the story has to be logical, otherwise the readers say, “Wait a minute, that couldn’t have happened?!”, and then you’ve lost them. And works of art aren't perfect, especially mine, but you strive for perfection, because you don’t want to lose that reader; you don’t want that reader to be popped out of the story by saying, “Wait a minute. I know something about the 16th century, and that couldn't possibly have happened.”

 

Ben Holden:

Yes, because that reader would be as ruthless, in terms of consuming the literature, as you were here as a kid. If you weren’t into the book, you would quickly lose interest, and it’s still those antennae that probably whirr as you’re writing these, and thinking of that reader, obviously not as your childhood self...

I know that when you accepted your CBE, you said the honour was about doing what you love, making books and stories as entertaining and accessible as possible:  “Reading is a hugely important part of my life, and I’m glad to have others who enjoy it too”.  And that, again, speaks to what your motivation is, and where you’re aiming for, and that’s easier said than done, because you’ve sold over 165 million of your novels, so you are a real master at it, and it’s a real skill.

 

Ken Follett:

Yes, and it takes a lot of different things.  You have to get a lot of different things right to get that reader’s attention and keep hold of it. You know, I admire the writers of TV drama because it’s so easy to turn the TV off or switch to another channel - if you get bored for 10 seconds, you’re tempted to change the channel.  Now, we’ve got a little more leeway in literature, because holding a book in your hand or IPad is a bit more of a commitment than turning the telly on and off. But, still you don’t want someone reading a book because they think they ought to, or because they’ve started it, and now they jolly well ought to finish.

You want them to keep reading the book because they can’t stop, they don’t want to return to normal life or to turn the light out and go to sleep; they don’t want the plane to land or the train to arrive in the station - that’s what you’re looking for.

Emails from readers that I prise the most are the ones that say, “I gave up on reading and hadn't read for years, but someone got me ‘Pillars of the Earth’ and it’s got me back to reading again, and now I’m reading all the time’. That’s enormously pleasing to me, and I do think there are rather too many books in the bookshops and libraries that don’t enchant people in that way. If you read half a dozen books that don’t work for you, you think about all the other things that can fill your evening - you can stream wonderful TV drama, go to the pub, play computer games, surf the internet - there are so many rivals to literature for the attention of the person at leisure.

 

Ben Holden:

Of course, if they're a fan of yours, they can play the ‘Pillars of the Earth’ computer game, board game, there’s a very good TV series... 

What’s funny about ‘Pillars of the Earth’ is that you’d already achieved huge success when you’d written it.  It was obviously seen as a departure and something of a gamble by the team around you when you said, “My next book will be about a cathedral in the middle ages; it’s going to be 375,000 words or 1000 pages long”.  It’s not obviously commercial material on paper, and yet, you’ve said it’s probably your best, and certainly your most successful book.

The statistics are astonishing.  When The Times asked its readers to rate the 60 greatest novels of the last 60 years, ‘Pillars of the Earth’ was placed at number two, after ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’.  It’s been the most popular ever title on Oprah’s book club, and it was voted the third greatest book ever written by a quarter of a million Germans in a poll. This is astonishing. 

And yet, when you sat down to write it, it was obviously something you really felt very passionately about, it was a bit of a gamble, and again, in terms of the process of you as an author, do you think that perhaps that moment in your life and career you had already achieved huge success, you’d honed your craft, but the fact that you were then to harness it with something perhaps more personal, but also a bit out on a limb, do you think that led to it becoming, as you’ve described, your best book?

 

Ken Follett:

I think you’re probably right, yes.  I think because it was so difficult; it drew out of me stuff that I didn’t know I could do.  I made the decision that it had to be a long book, simply because of the theme of it being a cathedral and everybody knows that takes a long time (to build) - years, decades. Having made that decision, I had to work my imagination extraordinarily hard.

One of the things I did was I made a list of all the things that had ever gone wrong in the history of cathedrals, and I made them all happen to Kingsbridge cathedral. That was part of my technique.

But, of course, you have in ‘Pillars of the Earth’, a group of people who go through a series of dramas.  And the easy way to do that is when you want to start a new drama, you bring in some more characters, and that’s not the best way to do it, because a reader is interested in the people he or she met in the first 50-100 pages, and really doesn’t want, on page 250, to be introduced to two completely new people, so the challenge is to think of more things that can happen, and more ways in which dramas can happen to the same group of people.

That was very hard and the only time in my life that I’ve felt what might be called ‘imagination fatigue’ is when I finished ‘Pillars of the Earth’.  I sort of thought, “My goodness, I don’t know if I’ll be able to write anything again”. I really felt that my imagination had done its life’s work and is finished now. It wasn't true, happily.   So, I think the challenge and difficulty of writing the book made me a better writer.

 

Ben Holden:

I understand that you are working on a prequel.  You wrote two follow up novels in the series - ‘World Without End’ and ‘Column of Fire’.  Do you feel the same risk, or obligation or pressure?  You have so many readers out there, legions of fans for these books.  Do you feel pressure still, going back in, taking it on again, to live up to imagination fatigue and everything you poured into Pillars?

 

Ken Follett:

I always feel that.

 

Ben Holden:

Did it feel easier after ‘World Without End’, after the wild success of ‘Pillars of the Earth’?

 

Ken Follett:

Well, you see, there’s a logical answer and an emotional answer.  The logical answer is that, of course, I know that after doing this for 40 years, I’m better than I was 40 years ago, and I’ve learned skills, I’ve learned a lot about literature.  The emotional answer is no, I don’t feel confident that the book you just mentioned, the prequel to ‘Pillars of the Earth’, I don’t feel confident that’s going to be a huge success, and I won’t until paying customers have started to send me messages saying, “I’ve just read your new book and I think it’s great”, and they might not do that.

That’s when I know I’ve done a good job, when I get messages from readers.  Before my books are published, they are read by quite a lot of people, - by my editors, my historical advisers, my friends and family, - I get a lot of advice, but the paying customers are a new category, and they are the ones I'm trying to please.  I don’t believe it until I actually see the evidence - and that’s not rational. I do, at a rational level, have confidence in myself, but at an emotional level I don’t.

 

Ben Holden:

But in the Kingsbridge series, they leap forwards, and perhaps backwards now centuries; they’re not segueing straight into..., which, I suppose, mitigates some of that, and also allows a fresh period for you to get into; and perhaps, that also allows for more leeway, and it makes sense on many levels.  But perhaps it wouldn’t be the obvious thing on the back of ‘Pillars of the Earth’ to jump forward as you have in ‘Column of Fire’ as well, but perhaps that allows for space for each of them to stand alone, as well?

 

Ken Follett:

When I thought about writing ‘World Without End’, I began to think about that, because when I would give talks in libraries and bookshops, and I always left a long time for questions at the end, because that’s what the audience liked, and sooner or later somebody would stand up and say, “I liked your books very much, and the one I like best is ‘Pillars of the Earth’”, and the others would applaud.  Now, that’s a message, especially for an author who is committed to enchanting people. 

Now, I couldn’t write a sequel to ‘Pillars of the Earth’ that involved the same characters, because that book tells you the story of the entire life of the characters; some are dead and some are pretty old, so there’s not much left that could be written. But, also, the building of that church was the most important thing that ever happened to them, so anything else that happened in their lives would be a damp squib in comparison, so a normal type of sequel was not possible.

So, that’s why I decided to write about the same town 200 years into future.  What’s happened now is that Kingsbridge has become the place where I tell the story of what was happening to England, and it was England, not Great Britain in those days. I get interested in some great historical period, some great historical drama, like the Spanish Armada, or the Reformation, and I think I can make a story out of this.  If I set it in Kingsbridge, it will have the drama; it may be a global historical drama, but the story is about how it affected half a dozen people who may as well be in Kingsbridge than anywhere else, which is a town I have already created, with a cathedral at the centre, which readers are already familiar with, and a place that many readers will remember, so that’s how the whole business of writing about Kingsbridge again and again came up. 

But, actually, it’s about something different each time: ‘World Without End’ is about the black death, and the book I've just finished is about the end of the dark ages and the beginning of the middle ages, so it’s about the Anglo-Saxons, Vikings and the Normans, but it takes place in Kingsbridge.

It’s just become to me quite an effective way to tell the story of England by telling the story of Kingsbridge.

 

 

Ben Holden:

You’ve done it superbly.  It’s lovely for readers to know the lineage of the characters better than the characters do, and also your century trilogy, and again, the sustained storytelling of the course of the ages and history of the country, is remarkable.  I’m curious whether you are someone who has looked into ancestral links and has similar interest in lineage at a personal level?  This is a popular pastime for people in libraries which are oracles for local communities to discover hidden secrets.  Is this something of interest to you?

 

Ken Follett:

I’m not obsessed with it. My wife Barbara is quite interested; she discovered, actually, that my grandfather’s grandfather here signed his marriage certificate with a cross, so my grandfather’s grandfather was illiterate. That was quite interesting - four generations ago, my ancestor couldn’t read.

 

Ben Holden:

Adult literacy remains quite an issue in this country.  I think one in six adults still has major problems reading, it’s quite shocking. 

 

Ken Follett:

It’s not immediately obvious to you because most people can write their name and recognise some words.  Where you really find out is when adults fail at easy literacy tasks, like making an appointments diary or making a list, things that involve very elementary literacy skills, like looking at a map, etc. That’s when you find out when people have this inability, and, of course, this holds people back dreadfully.  And a lot of people that can’t read or write are actually very intelligent people; that’s why you sometimes don’t know they’re illiterate.

 

Ben Holden:

Rhian is this something libraries in Cardiff are working on counteracting?

 

Rhian Jones:

Funnily enough, I was in a library yesterday, and a young gentleman came up and said he couldn't read or write and needed some support, so there are literacy areas that we do tackle.  We do book clubs and we do read aloud, and we engage people from a very early age. It’s a welcoming place for people who do have problems, and we support them with that, but it is quite shocking for people to come and say they can’t read.

 

Ben Holden:

A library is not necessarily an obvious destination for someone who has issues, and the embarrassment and vulnerability around illiteracy.

 

Rhian Jones:

The library is there to support people, and because it’s becoming more of a community hub now, we do have more people coming in who may not have come in before, and we try and break down all the barriers, and we have people to help specifically if English is a second language, or if they need to have classes, we do try and support people.

 

Ben Holden:

Ken, if you forgive me, I will read one last little section from ‘Pillars of the Earth’.  Again, this is Tom Builder.  Another passage that struck me - Tom Builder around the transcendence of his job:

“Tom was enjoying building the wall.  It was so long since he had done this, that he’d forgotten the deep tranquillity that came from laying one stone upon another in perfect straight lines and watching the structure grow.  These stones would be part of Tom’s cathedral, and this wall that was now only a foot high, would eventually reach for the sky.  Tom felt he was at the beginning of the rest of his life.”

After all the research and outlining etc, do you experience this still? Do you get those moments when you are constructing these novels?

 

Ken Follett:

Yeah I do, I often think when I’m writing about how many people are going to read this. That does two things:  One is when I write something I think is really good, I think, “Yes, they’ll love that, that will bring tears to their eyes”, or, “That’ll make their pulses race”.  But it also means if I do something not so good, I think about all those millions of people, and I think, “No, no this can't go out, I’ve got to do this chapter again, it won’t enchant them; they’ll go, ‘That was alright’”, so, I do it again. So yes, I have that feeling of satisfaction, because every sentence I’m writing is like one of Tom Builder’s stones, and if I do it well, it’s exhilarating.  But if I lay that stone wrong, I’ve got to knock it down and start again.

 

Ben Holden:

You write very engagingly in the Notre Dame book of Victor Hugo.  You’ve mentioned him already and the ‘Hunchback of Notre Dame’.  You say that Hugo had written 180,000 words in four and a half months - that’s astonishing, a prodigious output.

 

Ken Follett:

It’s terrific, absolutely terrific. Mind you, authors of this period had no qualms about digressing for several pages about something that was on their mind. Balzac’s the worst - at the drop of the hat. In one of his stories, there’s about 20 pages about the modern girl, I mean the modern girl in 1850.  It’s absolute stodge.  In the ‘Hunchback of Notre Dame’, there's quite a lot of not very pertinent digression.

  

Ben Holden:

I was very struck by the short quote from Notre Dame that you put on the front of the book. I wondered if you wouldn't mind reading that; it’s very eye-catching prose from Victor Hugo.

 

Ken Follett: 

“It was one of those spring days that is so gentle and pretty, that all Paris treats it like a Sunday, crowding the squares and boulevards. During such days of clear skies, warmth and peace, there comes a supreme moment at which to appreciate the portal of Norte Dame.  It is when the sun, already sinking, shines almost directly on the cathedral. Its rays, more and more horizontal, slowly leave the pavement and climb the vertical facade to highlight the countless carvings against their shadows, until the great rose window, like the eye of a cyclops, is reddened as if by reflections from a furnace.”

 

Ben Holden:

You’re about to embark on a friendship tour of European cities. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

 

Ken Follett:

Well, there are four of us, and we all have millions of readers in Europe who read us in their own languages, and the four authors are me, Lee Child, Jojo Moyes and Kate Mosse, and we all feel embarrassed and mortified that the message our country is sending to Europe is that we don’t want to be part of you anymore. We do. We love having all of those readers in different languages, and those, of course, who may who read us in English which is not their native language. And we just hate the idea that they might be feeling spurned by us. They’ve supported us, bought our books, they’ve written us fan letters, so we want to make a gesture that says we really cherish you.  So, the four of us are going on a short book tour; we’re going to Milan, Madrid, Berlin and Paris in November, and we’re just going to appear in theatres and talk about our work and answer questions like we always do, and also involve authors from the countries that are visiting in the evening, just to tell those people that there may be a lot of people in our country that don’t want to be part of Europe, but we do.

 

Ben Holden:

Speaking of politics, and you are a political animal, what have you made of the recent ongoing closures of libraries?

 

Ken Follett:

It’s terribly, terribly short sighted isn’t it? The most valuable thing a country can have is an educated workforce, and this is what libraries are about, even if you only come here to borrow books for pleasure, you’re still improving your literacy skills - even if you don't know you’re doing it, but you are improving your literacy skills. It’s not just about books in libraries; there are many people in our country that don’t have access to a computer at home.  It really has become a bit difficult to function in our country if you don't have access to the internet. We don’t have to invent something. We’ve got it. We’ve got this fantastic network of libraries and dedicated people who run them who are idealistic about the whole idea of a nation that is literate and educated. This is here already and it seems to me kind of insane that we’re inch by inch, bit by bit closing it down.

 

Ben Holden:

And Rhian, this is a hub, as other libraries have become.  Indeed, we can hear the Goldie singalong monthly group trooping in right now.  And, as we arrived, there were people doing a workshop on jobs and employment, and all the computers were being used, but you still have a good number of books which is so important.  But, as I understand it, most of the libraries in the area are now hubs?

 

Rhian:

There is one Carnegie library in Cathays that is sort of a historic centre, as well as a library, so they don’t have things like dementia clubs.  The hubs are always looking to break down barriers of loneliness; we have knitting groups, we have book clubs and read aloud groups; it’s become a community type place, buzzing, but at the core of it is the library service.

 

Ben Holden:

It’s great walking in the building, which is from 1907, and is painted in suffragette colours. Carnegie established libraries in the areas on the understanding that local taxes or contributions would sustain them, and obviously there is a statutory obligation on local authorities to provide a library service. How would you say the library system or network is at the moment, or has been recently in Wales?

 

Rhian Jones:

It’s been difficult. From being standalone libraries, we’ve had to do different things, e.g. service bin bags and bus passes, and all the services have been mounted up.

 

Ben Holden:

I did notice right at the front desk food bank contribution signs, which is also a sign of the times we are living in.

 

Rhian Jones:

We’re also a point system where people can drop of school uniforms and they go to our book distribution place, and someone sorts them out and takes them to families who can’t afford school uniforms. A lot is being done to assist people.  A lot of the libraries are going to be blood pressure hubs where people can go in and get their blood pressure tested.

 

Ben Holden:

Ken, as we’re in a library, I always like to know, are you someone who has as ordered bookshelves as your plots are well ordered and thought through, and is the construction of your library as meticulous and does it have strong foundations etc. as the cathedrals that you write about?

 

Ken Follett:

I work in a library, but my library at home is not big enough for my books, so the whole house has become a library.  I have novels alphabetically by author, history books chronologically by subject, so that makes it easy to find. I periodically run out of space. For the last book, ‘Column of Fire’,  250 books were bought, read or consulted.  I get to the stage where I have to give books away.  Other than history and fiction, my books are then ordered by subject. Reference books are a big thing, or at least they used to be.  I used to consult the Encyclopaedia Britannica at least once a day and haven't looked at it for decades now - it’s just so easy to look things up on the internet. The 20 volume Oxford Dictionary I still use - it’s the only dictionary for me, and one or two other reference books. Atlases of course, as the map is not quite the same - even if you’ve got a big screen computer -, it’s not enough, as I want a huge map.  I’m toying with the idea of new book and have just traced the route of an illegal migrant from Lake Chad in Sub Saharan Africa to Sicily. Now, I needed a huge map for that. If I do this book, and I might not do this, but it’s very important to know the details of this journey, almost mile by mile, because there’s going to be drama all the time; this is an illegal enterprise that they’re involved in, we know about the horrendous dangers facing these people - the internet was no good for me, I needed a paper map bigger than my dining table.

 

Ben Holden:

Do you like Ebooks?

 

Ken Follett:

I do occasionally read them. I have a preference, like most people of my generation, for an actual physical book. But I’ve used them quite often, and I don’t have a problem with it, it’s just not quite the pleasure I get.  And, I also like the way my books look - at home, in a bookshop or in a library, I like to look at that great, big bookcase, and think of all the pleasure and information and enlightenment there is on those shelves, and it’s all for me - I can have it all, I can borrow the books, I can buy them...what a great world we live in; and, of course, I’m conscious of this because of writing about the middle ages so much when a book was a rare thing. In ‘Pillars of the Earth’, the library at Kingsbridge monastery has 12 books, and they’re very proud of them.  Now, contrast that with what we have, and if we’re in a public library, it’s free and if we’re in a bookshop it’s not that expensive. It makes you feel privileged in the century we live in.

 

Ben Holden:

I would like to ask you to browse the shelves to see if there isn't something you’d like to borrow or take away?  Whatever you like, an old favourite or something new.

 

Book selection

 

Ken Follett:  ‘The Commitments’ (by Roddy Doyle).

Ben  Holden:  Great novel, great movie.

Ken Follett:  And I haven’t read this.

Ben Holden:  ‘Smile’ by Roddy Doyle - is that his most recent? Yes, 2017.

Ken  Follett:  I think I could read this one on the train going home.  Good first sentence:

“I stayed up at the bar a few times, but I didn’t want the barman thinking I needed someone to talk to”.   Because he obviously does need someone to talk to.  I quite like sentences that mean the opposite of what they say.  I think this will take me all the way to Paddington!

 

[END]

 

Thank you for listening to this, the first Ex Libris podcast.

Let this be the start of a beautiful friendship.

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