Everything about Ken Follett totally explained
Ken Follett (born
June 5,
1949) is a
British author of
thrillers and historical novels. He has sold a total of
100 million copies
Life
Follet owns a house on the caribbean island of
Antigua.
Ken Follett, the son of Martin and Veenie Follett, was born in
Cardiff, Wales, and lived there until the family moved to London at the age of ten. Barred from watching movies and television by his devoutly Christian parents, he developed an early interest in reading but remained an indifferent student until he entered his teens. Applying himself to his studies, he won admission in
1967 to
University College London, where he studied philosophy and became involved in leftist politics. He married his first wife, Mary, in 1968.
After graduation, in the autumn of
1970 Follett took a three-month post-graduate course in journalism and went to work as a trainee reporter in
Cardiff on the
South Wales Echo. After three years in Cardiff, he returned to London as a general-assignment reporter for the
Evening Standard. Finding the work unchallenging, he eventually left journalism for publishing and became, by the late 1970s, deputy managing director of
Everest Books. He also began writing fiction on evenings and weekends as a hobby. Success came gradually at first but the publication of
Eye of the Needle in 1978 made him both wealthy and internationally famous. Each of Follett's subsequent novels has also become a best-seller, ranking highly on the
New York Times best-seller and
NovelTracker.com
lists; a number have been adapted for the screen.
Follett became involved, during the late 1970s, in the activities of Britain's
Labour Party. In the course of his political activities, he met the former
Barbara Broer, a Labour official, who became his second wife in 1984. She was elected a Member of
Parliament in
1997, representing
Stevenage. She was re-elected both in
2001 and in
2005. Follett himself remains a prominent Labour supporter and fundraiser.
Work
Follett is widely received as a talented historical/thriller author of fiction, with a long series of international best-sellers to his name.
Leaving aside a series of competent but undistinguished paperback originals written under various pseudonyms, of which
The Modigliani Scandal and
Paper Money are perhaps the best known, Follett's literary career has gone through four distinct phases.
The first, and most distinguished, phase comprises
Eye of the Needle and the five books (four fiction and one non-fiction) that followed it. All are variations of the classic espionage thriller, pitting one or two daring, resourceful agents against a numerous and well-equipped enemy. The settings are both geographically and chronologically diverse, ranging from World War I Europe in
The Man from St. Petersburg to (then) present-day Israel, Iran and Afghanistan in
Triple, On Wings of Eagles and
Lie Down with Lions. Like the early works of
Frederick Forsyth, another journalist-turned-novelist, Follett's early thrillers devote much attention to
how things are done.
The Key To Rebecca, for example, hinges on the workings of a particular type of secret code, the hero of
Triple is a master of disguise, and clandestine radio transmitters play a major role in
Eye of the Needle. All six books--including
On Wings of Eagles, the non-fictional story of the successful attempt to rescue two American employees of
Ross Perot's company
EDS from
Iran after the 1979
Revolution--follow the basic conventions of the thriller genre. All six, however, use those conventions in unconventional ways: making the protagonist of
Eye of the Needle a German agent, for example.
The second phase of Follett's career was a conscious departure from the first: a series of four historical novels written in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
The Pillars of the Earth, the first of the four, set the pattern for the three that followed. Unlike Follett's earlier thrillers, it featured a large cast, multiple plotlines, occasional outbursts of violence, and extensive use of historical background.
Pillars, set mostly in medieval England, followed the building of a cathedral.
Night Over Water was a
Grand Hotel-style tale that took place aboard a transatlantic seaplane flying from
Southampton to
New York on the eve of
World War II.
A Dangerous Fortune revolved around family and business intrigue in a large family of financiers in Victorian-era
London, and
A Place Called Freedom took place in Britain's North American colonies around the time of the
American Revolution.
Follett changed literary gears a third time in the late 1990s, with a pair of books set firmly in the present and using high technology as a plot device.
The Hammer of Eden focused on the potential use of earthquakes as a terrorist weapon, and
The Third Twin on the darker aspects of biotechnology. The two novels--seemingly an attempt to mine the same fictional vein as
Michael Crichton--were comparatively unsuccessful. Reviewers, as well as many readers, found the characters shallow and the effort required to suspend disbelief too great.
Follett returned to conventional low-tech thrillers in
Code to Zero, an espionage story pitting Soviet and American agents on the eve of America's first
satellite launch. The World War II adventures
Jackdaws and
Hornet Flight put Follett firmly back where he began: writing about daring agents operating undercover behind enemy lines, charged with a mission that could change the course of the war. Some critics and readers hailed them as a welcome and long-overdue return by Follett to the kind of story he writes best. Others regarded them as old wine in new bottles: rehashings of themes and situations he'd treated more interestingly in his earlier work.
Barring another radical shift in his literary output, Follett's reputation is likely to rest on his early thrillers (especially
Eye of the Needle and
The Key to Rebecca) and on
The Pillars of the Earth, which he himself is said to regard as his finest work.
His most recent novel is
World Without End, a sequel to
The Pillars of the Earth, released in October 2007. He was inspired to write this novel in the cathedral of the Spanish-Basque town of
Vitoria-Gasteiz, which is why Vitoria has honored him with a sculpture in his likeness.
Bibliography
Footnotes
Further Information
Get more info on 'Ken Follett'.
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