>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington DC. >> I'm Patrick Anderson. I review fiction for the
Washington Post and all of us at the Post are very--
thank you, thank you. [ Laughter ] [ Applause ] >> I trust that's for
the Post and not for me. All of us at the Post are very,
very proud to be associated with this wonderful event and
we're very grateful to all of you for making it such a
success for 10 years now. It's now my pleasure to
introduce a master story teller who for 30 years has been one of the world's bestselling
authors, Ken Follett. Mr. Follett has had an extraordinary
life and I can only touch on a few highlights briefly. He was born in Cardiff, Wales
and a son of a tax inspector. He was educated at state schools
and University College London. In his 20s, he first worked as
a newspaper reporter and then as an editor for a publishing house. He was also writing in his
spare of time and in 1979, his novel Eye of the Needle
became a worldwide success but please note this. Eye of the Needle wasn't
Mr. Follett's first book. It was his 11th book and
he was still in his 20s. This is a very determined man. [Laughter] That initial success
has been followed by 30 years by-- for 30 years by a whirlwind of
international bestsellers, movies, mini series, prizes, and acclaim. A partial list of his novels
would include the Key to Rebecca, The Man from St. Petersburg,
Lie Down with Lions, On the Wings of Eagles,
The Pillars of the Earth, and its sequel World Without End. Moreover, Mr. Follett has a
life away from his computer. He plays guitar in a group called
Damn Right I Got the Blues. [ Laughter ] >> Chicago Blues are
their specialty. And he and his wife who was a
member of parliament have been-- long been active in England's
Labour Party as well as in civic, educational, and charitable
activities. His new novel, Fall of Giants,
is the first volume of a trilogy that will carry five
families through many of the great events
of the 20th Century. It will be officially published next
Tuesday although I suspect a number of you already have copies and in
14 countries it will be officially published next Tuesday. And we're very fortunate to have
him here today to discuss it. Let's welcome Ken Follett. [ Applause ] >> Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. It's a great pleasure to be here. In fact, I can't think of
anywhere better to be-- I think I'd be worried
if I wasn't here. I mean where else should
an author be [laughter], you know, on a day like this. All these people, it's
a wonderful occasion and I'm very happy to be here. I'm gonna talk a bit
about Fall of Giants. My last book World Without End
kind of spoiled me in two ways. I didn't-- it was like
running a marathon. It's very long-- it's the
longest book I've ever written about 420,000 words and I didn't
wanna go back to writing thrillers which seemed like going from
the marathon to the sprint. And also, you responded so
warmly to World Without End. People all over the world
liked it so much that I wanted to do something like that
again, but I didn't want to write another medieval story. The Pillars of the Earth and
World Without End both set in the Middle Ages and I'm thrilled
that readers liked them so much, but I also don't wanna be the guy
that writes medieval books partly because I've always kind of chalked
and changed a bit in my career and it-- that's good for me
because it keeps me infested, and I think it's good for
readers because if, you know, if the material fascinates
me and excites me, then I think that helps me to make
it fascinating and exciting for you. So I wanted to change, so what
could I do that would have the kind of sweep of World Without End? World Without End is
about the Black Death. The Pillars of the Earth is
about building a cathedral. What could I write that would
have that kind of scope? And I thought about the 20th Century
because it's the most dramatic and violent century in
the history of human race and it's also our history. I lived through half of it. All of my readers will have lived
through some of the 20th Century and our parents and grandparents
lived through the rest of it so it's where we came from. As well as being very
dramatic in its own right. I also think that it's
the kind of book that isn't written much anymore,
a sort of long meaty tale that describes an entire society. And I thought of-- there
are some other books that do that whose subject is an
entire society, one that sprang to mind funny enough
was Peyton Place. Do you remember Peyton Place? [ Laughter ] >> It was-- it was notorious
really because it was so sexy, but it kind of described that whole
town and then by a huge contrast, Middlemarch by George Eliot which also describes a whole
town although she leaves out all the bit that-- bits that
Grace Matellios [phonetic] has put in about the kind of
sleazy underside of life. I think the charm of
books like that is that they describe a whole society. The Last Days of Pompeii, a
classic book by Bulwer-Lytton, same sort of thing, it
describes the whole society. So I've got a feeling that one of
the things that readers like is that sense of painting
on a big canvas. Now, I said the 20th Century
is very dramatic and bloody. It's also too long for one book
so I've decided to write a trilogy and divide it into 3 by 3
wars, the First World War, The Second World War,
and the Cold War. And I looked around for
a novel that I could read that would show me how
another author had dealt with writing something like this
from an international point of view. And I discovered that
nobody's done that. There are books like this. The book I read with most interest
was the Winds of War by Herman Wouk which I imagined many people
in the room have read. He wrote two books. He also wrote War in Remembrance. But that tells the story
of World War 2 really from a very American point
of view and I wanted to write from an international point of view. So I-- so how was I
gonna-- I developed-- I decided they would need to be
five families to tell a story of the 20th Century from an
international point of view. So we have an American
family, of course, a young man, a young American man
who's a very minor aid in the White House working
with Woodrow Wilson. We have a Russian family,
two brothers one-- two brothers who wanna
go to America. One goes to America and
the other stays behind that becomes a revolutionist. Actually, that part of the story is
based on a true story that a friend of mine told me years
ago about how his mother and her two brothers had been
saving up to leave Russia in 1914. They got enough money
for one ticket. They sent their sister,
the youngest, and the other two brothers
never made it. They were recruited into the army. They fought in the First World War. They became revolutionaries. They became commissaries
in the Soviet Union and they led terrific
career in the Soviet Union and never went to America. And my friend's mother,
at the age of 90, saw an ad in Los Angeles Times
saying, from a private detective, "I will put you in touch with your
long lost relatives in Russia. Send me 100 dollars." And she did and my
friend said this maybe-- you're never gonna see your 100
dollars and you're never gonna see that detective, but he was wrong. She got in touch with her brothers. So the Peshkov family is kind
of based on a true story. And just to finish that story, when
my friend's mother finally went back to Russia and met up
with her brothers, you'll never guess
what they said to her. They were retired by then and
they said, we're still powerful and we think we can
get you over here. [ Laughter ] >> They really felt quite guilty. She'd been the unlucky one. She'd spent her life living in California driving a Cadillac
wearing a mint coat [laughter] and she missed out on everything. Anyway, that was the-- that was
the inspiration for the Peshkovs and we have a German
family, a young spy, a young German diplomat who's
also a spy, an English family of Aristocrats, and the
family of Welsh coal miners. Now, some of you know that
I'm Welsh and so the-- and my grandfather was a coal miner. So the-- that part came natural-- naturally to me writing the
family of Welsh coal miners. And so we see the seismic
events of world history through the eyes of these people. Some of them, very ordinary
people from very poor families, some of them very powerful
people, very upper class people, very wealthy people,
and we see them all. And the other thing I wanted
to do, I could've written kind of five parallel novels about
these five families as they passed through these events, but I
thought it would be more interesting and more fun for me to write and
for you to read if they all met and inter-linked, and they-- some
of them fell in love and some of them came to hate
one another, and so on. >> So the five families
all interlink as they go through these-- these great events. Now, I will-- I'm gonna
read you a short scene which I'm kind of pleased with. I hope you like this
scene as much as I do. And it's set-- it's set
towards the end of the book. Fitz is the Earl-- Fitz Herbert. He's called Fitz and he was in--
he was supposed to be the villain of this story, actually, but I got
to kind of liked him in the end. So he's not that villain. He does some bad things, but
he's not that villainous. So this is one of his scenes
and I'll read you this and then I'd be very
happy when I've read this to answer questions 'cause
that's always the most fun part of a-- an occasion like this. And there are two microphones here. So if you wanna ask questions, all you have to do is
come up to the microphone. Fitz was outraged. That summer of 1920. When a Russian trade delegation
came to London and was welcomed by the Prime Minister David Lloyd
George at #10 Downing Street. The Bolsheviks was still at war
with the newly reconstituted country of Poland and Fitz thought Britain
should be siding with the Poles, but he found little support. London dockers went on strike
rather than load ships with rifles for the Polish Army and that Trades
Union Congress threatened a general strike if the British
Army intervened. However, he could not keep quiet when he learned what the Russians
Kamanev and Krasin were up to as they went around Britain. Room 40 still existed or
be it in a different form and British intelligence
was intercepting and deciphering the telegrams
the Russians were sending home. Lev Kamenev, the Chairman of the Moscow's Soviet
was shamelessly putting out revolutionary propaganda. Fitz was so incensed that he berated
Lloyd George early in August at one of the last dinner parties
of the London season. It was at Lord Silverman's
house in Belgrade Square. The dinner was not as lavish as Lord
Silverman had thrown before the war. There were fewer courses with
less food sent untasted back to the kitchen, and the
table decoration was simpler. The food was served by
maids instead of footmen. No one wanted to be
a footman these days. Fitz guessed those extravagant
Edwardian parties were gone for good. However, Silverman was still able
to attract the most powerful men in the land to his house. Lloyd George asked Fitz
about his sister Maude. That was another topic
that enraged Fitz. "I'm sorry to say that she's
married a German and gone to live in Berlin," he said. "I heard that" said Lloyd George. "I just wondered how she was
getting on, delightful young woman." The Prime Minister's liking for delightful young women was
well known, not to say notorious. On another subject,
Prime Minister said Fitz, "This fellow Kamenev
is a Jew Bolshevik. You ought to deport him." The Prime Minister was in
mellow mood with a glass of champagne in his hand. "My dear Fitz," he said amiably,
"The government is not very worried about Russian misinformation
which is crude and violent. Please don't underestimate
the British working class. They know clock trap
when they hear it. Believe me Kaminev's speeches are
doing more to discredit Bolshevism than anything you or I could say." Fitz thought this was
complacent rubbish. He had even given money
to the Daily Herald. It is this discourteous, I
agree, for a foreign government to subsidize one of
our own newspapers. But really, are we
frightened of the Daily Herald? It's not as if we Liberals and
Conservatives didn't have papers of our own, but he's contacting the
most hardline revolutionary groups in this country, maniacs
dedicated to the overthrow of our entire way of life. The more the British get
to know about Bolshevism, the less they will like it. You mark my words. It's formidable only when seen it at
distance through impenetrable mists. Bolshevism is almost a
safeguard to British society, but it infects all classes with
a horror of what may happen if the present organization
of society is overturned. I just don't like it. Besides, Lloyd George went on. "If we throw them out, we may have to explain how we know
what they're up to? And the news that was spying on them
may inflame working class opinion against us more effectively than
all of their turgid speeches." Fitz did not want to continue to be
lectured on political realities even by the Prime Minister and he
persisted with his argument because he felt so angry. "But surely, we don't have
to trade with the Bolsheviks. If we refuse to do business with all
those who use their embassies here for propaganda, we wouldn't
have many trading partners left. Come, come, Fitz. We trade with cannibals
in the Solomon Islands." Fitz was not sure that was true. The cannibals of the Solomon
Islands did not have much to offer after all, but he let it pass. "Are we so badly off that we
have to sell to these murderers?" "I fear we are. I've talked to good many businessmen
and they have rather frightened me about the next 18 months. There are no orders coming in. Customers won't buy. We may be in for the worst
period of unemployment that any of us have ever known,
but the Russians want to buy and they pay in gold." "I would not take their gold." "Ah, but Fitz," said Lloyd George. "You have so much of your own." [Laughter] Thank you. [ Applause ] >> Thank you. I'll say one more thing about
that 'cause people often ask me about the dividing
line between fiction and real history in
stories like this. And in that little scene, obviously,
there's a fictional character, Fitz, having a conversation with a real
historical person David Lloyd George and the way I handled that was that
everything that Lloyd George said in that conversation was
something that he did actually say in other circumstances
on that topic. He wrote, in fact, the long
memo about the visit to England of Kamenev and Krasin, and
he said all of those things about Bolshevism being best
seen through impenetrable mists. He said all of those
things in the memo. So his side of the
conversation is all accurate stuff that he would have said
in that conversation and did actually say in a memo. Gentleman here has a question. >> Yes. In the recently produced
television series based on Pillars of the Earth, there are quite
a few changes in the TV version than as compared to the book, not the least of which was
completely ignoring the King Henry II-Becket controversy which
did not provide for the last-- dramatic last line in your book
where Philip was handed the cane to take part of Henry's punishment. My question is which of the changes
do you most regret them having made [laughter] and how many
fist fights did you get into [laughter] with
the screenwriters? And have you learned something
that's gonna be different from when they put on
the World Without End? >> Well, you know, they tell a
story in pictures and I tell a story in words, and so I
know from the outset that when they make a miniseries,
they're gonna change it. They have to change it. There was-- in the miniseries-- in
the book it was clear, for example. It was clear why Regan had such a
hold over her son William Hamley. Now, I don't think that was
difficult to understand in the book, but on TV they felt that
they needed a shorthand way of making her hold clear. So they invented an incestuous
relationship between the two which wasn't in the book and I
didn't particularly like that. If there was anything,
I mildly regretted that because it didn't
seem quite right to me, but I understood why
they had to do it. And the ending I also understood
even at eight hours, there was-- the miniseries of Pillars
was eight hours, even at that length
it's very much reduced from the book there's an awful
lot in the book that isn't in the miniseries, and I could
see why it made much more sense to end it in King's Bridge. If they went into the whole
Becket-Henry II's story, it would take, you know, they
would have need another hour and it would have taken the story-- it takes the story sort of
into a new area and I could see that in trying to economize,
they chose to leave that out. And I thought the ending that they
had actually worked quite well. I didn't-- if you read the book, you
might have missed the Becket story, but if you didn't read the
book, I think you would think that was quite a satisfactory
ending. So I'm not upset about it at all. In fact, I was really pleased
with the miniseries, good script, great actors, well directed, and
most of the people that I've talked to here who watched it in
July and August when it was on Stars here have really
enjoyed so I'm pleased. What's your question ma'am? >> Well, I just want a say on that. I have to say I didn't know
you as an author before. I actually saw the miniseries which
I loved and found fascinating. >> Good. >> And I actually loved it and
now I wanna read your books. >> Good. >> So I'm the reverse of that. >> Okay good. >> But my question to you is when
you write what's your process? Do you get up in the morning-- I mean, and start writing
in the morning? Do you write at night? Do you write over a year? Well we call it garage here. I'm not sure what you call it there. But-- >> Okay. >> What's your process? >> Well, I'm a morning person. I like to start early and I don't
like to work in the evening. So I usually-- I usually
wake up with the next bit of the story very much on my mind. And really, all I want to do is
get on with writing the next scene that I-- so I don't
even get dressed. I put on a bathrobe and I
make tea because as, you know, Brits can't do anything without tea. [ Laughter ] >> You got that-- he's got it right. >> I take my mug of tea
to my desk and I often-- I'm usually writing by about 7
o'clock in the morning and then with the usual breaks for things
like shaving and walking the dog. I usually work through 'til
about 5 o'clock in the afternoon, then I do business for an hour. I do e-mails and phone calls. And then at 6 o'clock I quite like to have a glass of
champagne [laughter]. >> Perfect [laughter]. >> Or two. [ Laughter ] >> And that's my working method. Sebastian Faulks wrote
the James Bond. You know, the latest James Bond
book was written by Sebastian Faulks and he looked up-- in Fleming's
working method which was to write for a couple of hours in the
morning, go scuba diving, have a cocktail, have lunch, take
a nap, go scuba diving again, write a little more, have some more
cocktails, and then have dinner and Sebastian Faulks said, "I
followed that routine exactly except for the cocktails and
the scuba diving." [ Laughter ] >> That's-- >> Thank you. >> What's your question sir? >> Yes [inaudible]. Thank you, I've enjoyed
your books ever since-- >> Thank you. >> A Place Called Freedom. And I wanna know, what's the
best advice you've ever received as a writer? >> Let me see. My agent once read one of
my early books and said-- none of these people has a past. And I thought about
that for a long time and that was a very good criticism. One of the faults with my early
books that weren't successful was that people had no life
outside the story and I realized that people have to have
a life outside the story to seem real to the reader. Obviously, you're focused
in the danger there-- they're in at the moment or
whatever their fears and hopes are at the moment, but you sort of need
to say, you know, about a character and what their mom and dad were like
and what kind of childhood they had and when was, you know, what was
it like the first time they had sex and all that, you know, all
these really important things about our lives. You need to think about them and
you need to know and you need to say something about
that for the character to seem real, so that
was good advice. >> Thank you. >> Yes sir. >> Hi. In Eye of the Needle,
what did Die Nedal mean by-- at the end of his messages
he wrote regards to Willy. What did that mean? >> Oh, it was a kind
of cheeky joke by him. I said this is long time
ago by the way [laughter]. I wrote that book 33 years ago. But the head of German intelligence,
the head of the Abwehr, was called Wilhelm Canaris and
so regards to Willy was regard to Wilhelm Canaris, the head
of the naval intelligence. Of course, the Kaiser's
name was also Wilhelm so it might have been a
little bit of subversive-- a little undermining of the Kaiser. But anyway, it was meant to show
that he was very independent and he didn't [inaudible]
to anybody. Ma'am, what's your question? >> I love Pillars of the
Earth and I was just wondering with all the research you
did on building a cathedral and also writing the sequel has
shift you on religion change? >> Well, no, not really. That was one of those things that I
made my mind up about as a teenager, you know, when I was about 17 or 18. But the interesting thing
about writing the Pillars of the Earth was it-- although
I'm not religious, and I'm-- partly because of my very
religious upbringing. I'm kind of hostile to
all that kind of thing. In writing the Pillars of the
Earth, it was about the building-- building a church so,
clearly, there had to be in that story some sympathetic
characters whose view of religion was different from mine. And so Prior Philip was really one of the most difficult
characters for me to write ever. And for one thing, he's
cheerfully celibate. I've never written a character
[laughter] who was celibate and happy about it before. And clearly, he had to be-- Prior Philip had to be
a very sincere Christian and so I modeled him on the kind
of Christians that-- that I admire. In our political life,
Barbara, my wife and I have-- we often worked with clergymen and
their agenda is the same as ours. They're concerned or some of
them are concerned about material and spiritual poverty
in their congregation and that's basically the
agenda of the Labour Party that Barbara and I belong to, so. We worked with clergymen and
I modeled Philip on the kind of clergymen that I really admire. Philip, you'll notice, never says
to anybody you're suffering now, but it'll be alright in
the afterlife in heaven. He always tries to solve
their problems here and now. He's a very practical Christian
in that respect and the kind that I've often come
across and admire, and I'll finish answering the
question by telling you about a monk who came up to me at a book
fair in Switzerland in Basel, German language, book fair in Basel. But this guy spoke very good English
and he came up to me and said, "I love the Pillars of the
Earth and all my brothers in the monastery also
loved the book." And I said, "I'm very
pleased to hear that." Although a little surprised
because I feel that it's not really
a very spiritual book. It's about the material
problems of building a cathedral and Prior Philip is a very practical
Christian and not really a very-- he's not interested in theology. He's in a way not very spiritual
and this monk said, "Yes, that's why we like him so much." [ Laughter ] >> So I guess I pleased them. Sir, what's your question? >> Vince [inaudible] good
to see you in person here. >> Thank you. >> I just wanna say The Man from
St. Petersburg is my favorite book that you wrote and it was
probably one of your earlier ones. >> Yes. >> And it was just
such a fantastic book. I rated it in my top five. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. That was my fourth
book written in about-- I guess in about 1981,
1982, and I'm very glad. I'm very pleased that
people are still reading it. What's your question ma'am? >> Hi. So you're raising a trilogy of about five families
that's for this very century. >> Yeah. >> I was wondering,
how do you manage to keep all the different pieces
of the story and the details in your mind while you're writing? >> With great difficulty. [Laughter] It's-- so first of all
I'm writing it one book at a time. I have a general outline of
the whole three, but that's-- it's pretty vague and I've realized
that if I wrote a detailed outline for the whole trilogy it might
take me years and I kind of-- I didn't want to spend that
long without writing something that you guys could read, you know, 'cause an outline is
only for me to read. So I wrote the Fall of Giants. I finished it, and then I
started on the outline for book 2 and I've written about a
hundred pages of book 2 now. The other thing I do,
I've done recently, and I found it very helpful,
I never used to do this, but I make a spreadsheet
in Excel on my computer and every time I introduce a new
named character, I put the character on the spreadsheet with his age or
her age, and any description I paste into the spreadsheet and that
really helps me keep track. I never used to do
this and it might be because I'm writing longer
books now or it might be because I'm getting older and I don't remember things
quite as well as I used to. But anyway, I found
that very helpful. And of course, the outline
that I write before I start to write chapter 1 says what
happens in every chapter, and says who the characters are. So that also helps
me keep hold on it. And finally, the other thing
I do which I find helpful in a funny way is, early in
the story, I cut out pictures from magazines and art books,
and so on, of people who look like the characters
that I've got in my mind and I stick all these
pictures up on a big board. So when I'm writing, I can look at
the board and I can see the faces of the characters more or less
as I imagine them and I find that that really helps
to make them vivid to me. So one way or another, I just
about managed to keep track. So what's your question? We better-- we do these
two questions and then I have to go, but-- >> It's actually a
very similar question. I was just gonna ask if you have any
advice for aspiring writers of how to balance many, many,
many story lines, just kind of juggling
them all at once. >> Well, that is quite
difficult and it's important to-- not to make the scenes too
short, not to jump from one to the other too quickly
but also if you leave one of the story lines untouched
for 100 pages then we've got to remember the readers
probably forgotten about it. So, I mean my touch stone
in all these questions-- my touch stone is that the reader
must be emotionally engaged. And that's all you need to do,
you know, if the reader cares, if the reader is happy or sad,
or anxious or angry, indignant, anything, then he or she will turn
the page and read what happens next. >> You have to-- whatever
you do, you have to have that emotional engagement
and if you don't have it, then no matter how good the book, no
matter how well written the book is, how intelligent, how clever, if the
reader isn't emotionally engaged, then it's gonna be
quite hard to read. So in answering that question, I
don't have very good specific advice about balancing storylines, but my underlying advice
would be the only thing that matters is are
you making people care about what's happening
to these people or not. And if you're not, then you're doing
something wrong and if you are, then it's probably
gonna be a bestseller. >> Thank you. >> Last question Madam. >> It's interesting to hear
that you formed a visual image of the person 'cause we
do that too as readers and it would be interesting that-- >> Yeah. >> But my question
is about research, when you're researching historical
events, I mean that's easy, but how do you research perspective? How do you research the American
perspective to World War I as opposed to the Russian? >> Well, on that question,
it's very useful-- I start with general history
books, but what I find so valuable are things like diaries
that people wrote at the time or memoirs of ordinary people, or
letters home, there are quite a lot of collections of letters home
from men who were fighting in the trenches, home to their
wives and girlfriends, and mothers and fathers, and that tells
you the real everyday. That gives you the
everyday feel of it, I mean, talk about perspective, you know. That's the man who is actually
sitting in that muddy trench with a pencil and a piece of
paper writing home to his mother. That will give you the real feel
of what it must have been like or a diary that he wrote
everyday sitting in his dugout. That's the kind of material
that's most valuable to me. Thanks everybody for coming. [ Applause ] >> This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.
