Ken Follett

1949

Ken Follett is a major historical novelist whose books combine broad social history, family drama, architecture, politics and war across long spans of time.

Ken Follett was born in Cardiff in 1949 and grew up in a household where many forms of popular entertainment were restricted, encouraging him to read extensively from an early age. He studied philosophy at University College London, then worked as a newspaper reporter and in publishing. After writing several thrillers under different names, he achieved international success with Eye of the Needle in 1978, a Second World War espionage novel.

Follett expanded into large-scale historical fiction with The Pillars of the Earth, published in 1989. Set around the construction of a cathedral in twelfth-century England, it combines architecture, labour, church politics and civil war. The later Kingsbridge novels carry the same community through the Middle Ages and into the early modern period. His Century Trilogy follows families in several countries through the First World War, the Russian Revolution, the Second World War and the Cold War. Follett’s strength lies in coordinating many characters across long periods while explaining political and technological change clearly. His novels are designed for broad accessibility and are particularly useful for readers who enjoy multigenerational sagas shaped by major historical turning points.

Periods and events

Formation of England Danish Conquest of England Elizabethan Religious Settlement Spanish Armada Gunpowder Plot French Revolution Industrial Revolution in Britain Battle of Waterloo Great Depression Spanish Civil War World War II Holocaust Rise of Nazism Battle of Crécy

Series

Series by Ken Follett (2 series)

The Kingsbridge Novels in Order

by Ken Follett 5 books 4.4

The Kingsbridge novels trace the development of a fictional English community across nearly nine centuries. Builders, merchants, clergy, landowners, labourers and reformers repeatedly contest who controls work, worship, law and education, while the town changes from an impoverished Anglo-Saxon settlement into a cathedral city and industrial centre. Chronologically,…

The Evening and the Morning

4.5

The Pillars of the Earth

4.4

World without End

4.4

A Column of Fire

4.4

The Armour of Light

4.4

The Century Trilogy in Order

by Ken Follett 3 books 4.3

The Century Trilogy follows five interconnected families from Britain, Germany, Russia and the United States from the years before the First World War to the collapse of Communist rule in Europe. Across three generations, miners, aristocrats, diplomats, political organisers, soldiers and journalists experience public events through marriages, rivalries…