Follett was born on 5 June 1949 in Cardiff, Wales. He was the first child of Martin Follett, a tax inspector, and Lavinia (Veenie) Follett, who went on to have two more children, Hannah and James.[6][7] Barred from watching films and television by his Plymouth Brethren parents, he developed an early interest in reading but remained an indifferent student until he entered his teens.[6][7] His family moved to London when he was ten years old, and he began applying himself to his studies at Harrow Weald Grammar School and Poole Technical College.
He won admission in 1967 to University College London, where he studied philosophy and became involved in centre-left politics. He married Mary, in 1968, and their son Emanuele was born in the same year. 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. In 1973 a daughter, Marie-Claire, was born.
Early career
After three years in Cardiff, he returned to London as a general-assignment reporter for the Evening News. Finding the work unchallenging, he eventually left journalism for publishing and became, by the late 1970s, deputy managing director of the small London publisher Everest Books.[6] He also began writing fiction during evenings and weekends as a hobby. Later, he said, he began writing books when he needed extra money to fix his car, and the publishers' advance a fellow journalist had been paid for a thriller was the sum required for the repairs.[8] Success came gradually at first, but the 1978 publication of Eye of the Needle, which became an international bestseller and sold over 10 million copies, made him both wealthy and internationally famous.[9]
Further successes
Each of Follett's subsequent novels has also 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.[10] 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 with the German edition of his book Whiteout in October 2005
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 Danish 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.
Set in 12th-century England, Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth chronicles the building of the greatest Gothic cathedral the world has knownand the struggle between good and evil that will turn church against state, brother against brother.
Te
Publisher: Pan macmillan
His weapon is the stiletto, his codename: The Needle. He is Hitler's prize undercover agent - a cold and professional killer.
It is 1944 and weeks before D-Day. The Allies are disguising their invasion plans with a phoney armada of ships and plane
Publisher: Pan macmillan
The first in Ken Follett's bestselling Century Trilogy, Fall of Giants is a huge novel that follows five families through the world-shaking dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for votes for women.
It is 1911. Th
Publisher: Pan macmillan
Code to Zero is a fast-paced, espionage thriller from number one bestselling author Ken Follett, author of the Kingsbridge series.
Three days that could change the world's political landscape . . .
A man wakes up to find himself lying on the gr
Publisher: Pan macmillan
His name was Feliks. He came to London to commit a murder that would change history. A master manipulator, he had many weapons at his command, but against him were ranged the whole of the English police, a brilliant and powerful lord, and the young W
Publisher: Pan macmillan
satisfying The Century Trilogy. On its own or read in sequence with Fall of Giants and Edge of Eternity, this is a magnificent, spellbinding epic of global conflict and personal drama.
Berlin in 1933 is in upheaval. Eleven-year-old Carla von Ulric
Publisher: Pan Books
Five families. Three decades. One extraordinary era. Edge of Eternity is the epic final volume in the Century trilogy.
As the decisions made in the corridors of power bring the world to the brink of oblivion, five families from across the globe ar
Publisher: Pan macmillan
The Evening and the Morning is the epic story that will end where The Pillars of the Earth begins.
A TIME OF CONFLICT
It is 997 CE, the end of the Dark Ages, and England faces attacks from the Welsh in the west and the Vikings in the east. Life i
Publisher: Pan macmillan
