Ken Follet

Born Kenneth Martin Follett in Cardiff, Wales, he was the eldest of four children by tax inspector Martin Follett, and his wife, Lavinia. His parents were devout members of the Plymouth Brethern, an Evangelical Christian movement, and forbade Follett from watching movies or television. He found an outlet in fiction, and in particular, the escapist mystery and adventure novels of Enid Blyton. At the age of ten, Follett moved with his family to North London, where he struggled to find much interest in school. In 1967, he studied philosophy at University College London, where he met and married his first wife, Mary, who gave birth to a son, Emanuele, in 1968. Upon graduation in 1970, Follett took his first job as a trainee reporter with the South Wales Echo, which led to work as a columnist with the Evening News in 1973. He found the work uninteresting, and began to write fiction as a creative outlet. His earliest published efforts were genre novels for the paperback market - lurid crime and spy stories penned under a variety of pseudonyms. But with the help of his American literary agent, Al Zuckerman, Follett honed his craft and published his first mainstream success: Eye of the Needle, a WWII thriller which became his first bestseller, as well as his first work to adapted into a feature film (Richard Marquand's "Eye of the Needle," 1981). He remained in the historical espionage vein for his next three novels: Triple (1979), The Key to Rebecca and The Man from St. Petersburg (1982). The following year, Follett shifted focus to pen On Wings of Eagles (1983), a semi-fictionalized account of a rescue mission funded by billionaire H. Ross Perot to retrieve two of his employees imprisoned by Iran's Ayatollah Khomeni in 1978. Both "Rebecca" (syndicated, 1985) and "Eagles" were successful adapted into TV miniseries, as was 1989's Lie Down with Lions, which became a feature for the Lifetime network in 1994. In 1989, Follett surprised many readers with The Pillars of the Earth, a historical drama about the political intrigue that surrounded the construction of a cathedral in 12th-century England. It became one of his most successful novels, earning rave reviews and an 18-week stint on the American bestseller lists. In Europe, Pillars reached bestseller status in several countries, including Germany, where it not only resided on their list for six years, but also spawned a successful board game and a German-Canadian miniseries, made in association with Ridley Scott's Scott Free Films, in 2010. Follett remained in the historical vein for his next three novels: Night Over Water (1991) was set during the early days of World War II, while A Dangerous Fortune (1993) and A Place Called Freedom (1995) took place in 19th-century England and 18th-century Scotland, respectively. He then returned to the spy genre for The Third Twin (1996), which ranked second behind John Grisham's The Partner on Publishing Trends annual survey of international bestselling fiction for 1997. That same year, CBS paid the record-breaking fee of $1.4 million to adapt "The Third Twin" into a miniseries starring Kelly McGillis and Larry Hagman. After publishing a pair of contemporary suspense thrillers (1998's The Hammer of Eden and Code to Zero in 2000), Follett returned to his roots with two World War II stories. Jackdaws (2001) followed the adventures of female British and French agents assigned to stop a German military communications line, while Hornet Flight (2002) followed a Danish couple who attempt to escape Nazi occupied Denmark in a biplane loaded with crucial German military information. He then published a contemporary thriller, Whiteout (2004), about a virus outbreak in Scotland, before returning to the world of Pillars of the Earth with World Without End; (2007), which took place during the devastation of the Black Plague in the Middle Ages. Follett's next three books comprised the "Century" trilogy, with events taking place during major moments of change and upheaval throughout the 20th century. Fall of Giants (2010) followed a quintet of international families through the First World War and the Russian Revolution, while Winter of the World (2012) covered the Second World War through the beginning of the atomic race. The last in the series, Edge of Eternity (2014), spanned the last half of the century, from the civil rights movement and Cold War onwards. Between these efforts, World Without End also received the miniseries treatment in 2013, airing on Reelz in America and Channel 4 in the UK, while ABC announced a ten-hour adaptation of Fall of Giants in 2014. Follett himself expanded into film production, overseeing two South African comedies, "White Wedding" (2009) and "Paradise Stop" (2011), directed by his stepdaughter, Jann Turner.