The world according to Ken Follett
The best-selling author discusses the loss of his son, his new book about Stonehenge and being immortalised in bronze.
Image credit: Jake Curtis
The best-selling author discusses the loss of his son, his new book about Stonehenge and being immortalised in bronze.
My wife Barbara and I will have been married for 40 years in November. What do I love about her? That’s a long list. She makes me laugh, we talk all the time about everything, and we have essentially the same values. We both feel strongly about politics, but we’re not hair-shirt socialists.
If we work to make life better in our country, we don’t think we have to deny ourselves a glass of Champagne.
We have six grandchildren and are hoping for great grandchildren, but the youth of today don’t have babies by accident the way we did.
I was 19 when my son Emanuele was born – as you may guess, he wasn’t planned. When you get married [to first wife Mary] at that age, people think it’s a disaster, but then this baby arrives, and you adore him and are programmed to make him the absolute centre of your existence.
He died just short of his 50th birthday, in 2018, of leukaemia. It’s a hole in your life. You don’t get over it. You don’t get past it. As the years go by, it hurts a bit less but I think about him every day. I hear a song on the radio and think, “Emanuele would have liked that”.
He’s buried in a natural environment where there are no tombstones, he’s part of the landscape. Barbara and I have bought plots there too, so we will all end up in the same place.
I like to work first thing. This morning, I got up at 5.15am, which is standard when I’m writing a book. If I’m up that early, I take a nap after lunch. It’s an old-age thing. I still work eight hours a day and can’t imagine retiring.
Authors don’t really, they just slow down. I haven’t reached that point – I’m enjoying it too much – but nobody lives forever.
My new novel, Circle of Days, was inspired by an archaeology book called How to Build Stonehenge. I thought: “Oh! That sounds like a Ken Follett story.” We know little about Stonehenge, but I’m allowed to speculate.
What we see today is the ruin, but when it was built it was enormous – 30 upright stones and 30 lintels, all in a circle.
I admire the ability of human beings leading a basic life to make something so beautiful. What they built is almost eternal.
Growing up with parents who were Plymouth Brethren, I used to read the Bible every day, and that’s good for a writer because a lot of the Bible is extraordinarily beautiful.
I was never allowed to go to children’s Saturday cinema, but it meant that, aged seven, I joined the local library instead. Being denied movies and TV intensified my love of words and stories.
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