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George Frideric Handel Messiah. Excerpt. Academy and Chorus of St. Martin in the Fields. Sir Neville Marriner. Jerry Hadley. Philips 434 695-2.

Willie Dixon "(I'm Your) Hoochie Coochie Man". Stranger than Fiction Album. Ken Follett (lead vocal, bass, acoustic guitar). Oglio Records OGL 82001-2.

Ludwig van Beethoven Für Elise. Vladimir Ashkenazy, Piano. Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Sir Georg Solti. London 443 723-2.

Johann Sebastian Bach Lute Suite No. 4 in E major, BWV 1006a. Prélude. (Arr. John Williams). John Williams, Guitar. Orquesta Sinfónica de Sevilla. José Buenagu, Conductor. Sony Classical SK 53 359.

Francis Poulenc La Grenouillère. Felicity Lott, Soprano. Pascal Rogé, Piano. Decca 458 859-2.

John Lennon, Paul McCartney "Because". John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison (a cappella). Apple / Capitol CDP 7243 8 34451 2.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Concerto No. 3 in G major, K. 216. First Movement. Gidon Kremer, Violin. Vienna Philharmonic. Nikolaus Harnoncourt. Deutsche Grammophon 453 043-2.

Kaplan Best-selling author and award-winning novelist and music lover, Ken Follett on today's edition of "Mad About Music."

[Theme Music]

Kaplan Starting in 1978, when he burst into the book world with his runaway best seller, ten million copies ultimately sold of The Eye of The Needle, British author Ken Follett has turned out more than a dozen riveting thrillers. We're on location in London today and, Ken Follett, welcome to "Mad About Music."

Follett It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me on the show.

Kaplan Now, The Eye of The Needle was made into a movie, wasn't it? And four of your other books were made into television mini-series. But as a child, you would never have been permitted to watch such things, would you? I understand that in your home, your parents were rather strict and kept you away from pop culture.

Follett Well, that's right. Both my parents were fundamentalist Christians, they belonged to, the whole family belongs to a group called the Plymouth Brethren. Of course, all religions make you do peculiar things, don't they? They make you wear a funny hat, or they forbid you to eat bacon or something. But in our house it was forbidden - we were not allowed to go to the movies, and we were, when I was very young, we were not allowed to watch TV, listen to the radio, or listen to gramophone records, unless they were hymns. My parents softened over the years, particularly after I and my sister and brother got old enough to mount a concerted attack on these kinds of prejudices, so as I got older, things broadened. We eventually got a radio; by the time I was twelve, I was allowed to buy pop records. But there was, nevertheless, there was a heavy bias against any kind of popular culture.

Kaplan Well, then, I'm not surprised to see that your first selection is a religious work, the Messiah. Did you first hear that as a child in your home?

Follett: Yes, indeed, the Messiah was one of the things that was permitted. Members of the family had it on those old gramophone records that played at 78 revolutions per minute. So we listened to this and of course it's tremendously jolly music. It has terrific tunes. There are loads of great tunes in the Messiah. Everybody likes it and everybody goes to see it at Christmas, and every amateur choir in the world performs it at some time or other. It is "pop music", in fact, and one of my favorite tunes is one I always refer to as "The Crooked Straight".

Kaplan Which begins, "Every valley"...

Follett "Every valley shall be exalted."

[Music]

Kaplan An excerpt from Handel's Messiah, sung by Jerry Hadley, the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, led by Sir Neville Marriner. A selection of my guest on today's edition of "Mad About Music," author Ken Follett. Now, along the way, you sort of rebelled against your parents' constraints and discovered the guitar and then even later on went on to form a rock band, didn't you?

Follett Yes, that's right. I bought my first guitar for four pounds, from a friend, when I was 14 years old and at that time, the kind of dominant pop music was what we then called "folk music." It wasn't really folk music, it was Peter, Paul and Mary and Bob Dylan and bands like that. But those tunes were pretty easy to play on the guitar, and I fairly quickly mastered three chords in the key of C, and with that could pretend to be a folk singer, which was musically not much of an achievement, but it was a very good way of getting to know girls. You know, because you'd pick up your guitar and play a few chords and they would sit and listen and you had their attention, you didn't have to make small talk. So, I learned to play a few chords and then it has been, playing the guitar has been, you know, a pleasure for me now for 40 years. It isn't something I've ever taken too seriously. I think everybody should have something in life that he's allowed to do badly.

Kaplan But you actually made a recording or two, didn't you?

Follett Well, yes. Quite recently, I was asked to contribute a track to an album of authors performing their favorite songs, which was sold in aid of the Literacy Volunteers of America. And I was very happy to do that. And so with my band, we recorded "Hoochie Coochie Man," which is probably the most popular blues ever written. There have been at least 500 recordings of it. It's composed by Willie Dixon.

Kaplan I gather that didn't start you thinking about a new career, though, right?

Follett No, no, apart from lack of talent, I don't think I would like the hours that musicians work. I happen to like to get up early in the morning and go to bed early in the evening. Musicians do the opposite.

Kaplan You're a morning writer! Well, "Hoochie Coochie Man," of course, was made most famous by Muddy Waters, but after our listeners get a glimpse of what you did with it, there may be some real competition. Why don't we hear a bit of what you did.

[Music]

Kaplan "Hoochie Coochie Man," made famous by Muddy Waters, but here performed by my guest on today's edition of "Mad About Music," author and sometime guitarist, Ken Follett. Now, guitar is your instrument today, but I wonder, like most children, did you start off with piano lessons in this very strict home?

Follett Yes. There was always a piano in the house. And everybody in my family played the piano. I never had any lessons, but I sort of picked it up. My father, in particular, was a good pianist. In fact, when he was 16 years old, his piano teacher told my grandfather that my father was good enough to be a concert pianist. And that was the last piano lesson my father ever had, because of course my Puritan grandparents were horrified at the prospect that anybody in their family should be a performer and go on the stage! That was the kind of Puritan religion that they adhered to. But my father played very well, and everybody else in the family played competently. And so I just sat at the piano and fooled around, and I can still - I have a piano now, I have a nice piano. It's a Steinway made in 1926. And I can still sort of sit down and play something that I've heard on the radio, or on a record. Not play it well - I don't want you to think that I'm accomplished in that way, but it comes easily. Picking out a tune on more or less any instrument comes easily to me. And so I learned to play the piano after a fashion, and one of the things that I remember, a piece of music I remember hearing and liking very much, I think probably one of my friends, who was having proper piano lessons, learned to play it and played it to me, and then I copied. And that was a very popular, well-known tune, called Für Elise by Beethoven.

[Music]

Kaplan Beethoven's Für Elise, performed by Vladimir Ashkenazy, a selection of my guest on "Mad About Music" today, Ken Follett. You can learn more about Ken Follett, listen to any of our earlier shows, read transcripts by logging onto our website, on WNYC.org, and then just click on "Mad About Music." When we return we'll learn more about music and movies and Ken Follett's books.

[Station Break]

Kaplan This is Gilbert Kaplan with best-selling author Ken Follett. Now, one of your books, The Eye of the Needle, was made into a movie, and four other books became mini-series. Did you take any interest at all in the soundtracks of these, and do you think a soundtrack is important in a movie?

Follett Oh, yes, I think it is very important, and I did take an interest. I talked to the producer of "Eye of the Needle" about the music, and I very strongly would have liked to use pop songs from wartime as the background to this movie. Songs like "We'll Meet Again," the great Vera Lynn song that was such an anthem. And the sort of swing tunes from that era which I like very much. But what normally happens when they're making a movie or a mini-series, of one of my stories, is that they politely asked me for my opinion and then completely ignored it! So, that's what happened in this case and "Eye of the Needle" had a very lush original score, very dramatic, and somewhat 40s in feel, or at any rate, 20th century classical in feel, and it wasn't at all what I had wanted.

Kaplan Well, let's see if we can prevent that from happening to you again by talking about a book of yours that hasn't yet been made into a movie, your latest book, Hornet Flight. And for example that's another wartime story, isn't it? So what would be the right soundtrack for that one?

Follett Well, yes, I think - it's another war story. Hornet Flight is set in 1941, and I think music, swing music from that era would be terrific, I think Glenn Miller, "In The Mood," that kind of stuff. Because we've all seen movies made in that era, and that's the music that we associate with that era, and I think it would be very evocative. But if they do make a movie of Hornet Flight, they'll probably do the same and ignore me.

Kaplan You know, I had director Mike Nichols on the show recently, and he said that a film without an adequate sound track really doesn't deliver the emotional character of the characters, and I'm wondering when you're writing books, do you ever hear music in your ear at all when you're imagining a scene?

Follett Well, generally speaking, no. I often have tunes going through my head as a lot of imaginative people do, and if music is mentioned in the story, then that goes 'round and 'round in my head. For example, there's a big scene in Hornet Flight in which the main character goes to the ballet in Copenhagen to see his girlfriend who's his main romantic interest perform, it's a very dramatic scene because she falls during the course of this ballet, and it so happened that the ballet that was performed during the summer of 1941 at the Royal Danish Theatre in Copenhagen was Les Sylphides, which has, you probably will remember, very sweet, really very sugary tunes, all in ¾ time, based on Chopin tunes, I think adapted from Chopin tunes, and for several days I was writing that scene, I had those ump-pa-pa Chopin tunes going through my head!

Kaplan Well then, we should transition perhaps away from Chopin, romantic music, to Bach, which I see is on your list as your next work. Now, I find it interesting that you have picked Bach. Many of my guests - I would say half of my guests - ultimately pick a Bach selection, which shows you just how universally he endures. But you've picked his Lute Suite, but not in the lute version, but in a transcription for the guitar.

Follett I like Bach's music for the lute very much, there are quite a lot of pieces for the lute. But the guitar is a superior instrument, that's why it superceded the lute, it's technically better. And I enjoy very much - John Williams is a great transcriber of all kinds of things for the guitar. He transcribed violin concertos and so on for the guitar. And I enjoy that very much, I enjoy hearing this kind of music played on the guitar and as it happens, I know John Williams slightly. He performed in my house once and we raised many thousands of pounds for charity at this performance. He's a very delightful, charming guy and we share an interest in the guitar, so I talk to him occasionally and I'm a big, big fan of his music. I go to see him in concert and I have all his records and this is one of them, the Lute Suite No. 4 Prélude.

[Music]

Kaplan The Prélude from Bach's Lute Suite No. 4, arranged for guitar and performed by John Williams, a selection of my guest on today's edition of "Mad About Music," author Ken Follett. Now, your selections today cover a wide range of composers, and I'm curious, are there composers, mainstream composers, whose work just doesn't appeal to you?

Follett I really can't get on with Benjamin Britten. It's …

Kaplan This is not going to do you much good in England to say this, but …

Follett That's absolutely right! Because he's terrifically popular and his work is performed all the time here. But I don't get it. I did go to see the opera of A Midsummer Night's Dream at Glyndebourne a couple of years ago, and its main part, king of the fairies Oberon, is written for a counter-tenor, and I must say that four hours of this really quite difficult music sung in this very high masculine voice was extremely hard to take. One of the least fun times I've ever had at the opera.

Kaplan Well, you know, sometimes people cite Britten as a link between classical music and modern music because, of course, he was modern but he was more accessible, at least to some people, than some of the contemporary composers today. Do you listen to contemporary music at all?

Follett Most of 20th century classical music passes me by, but I have in the last few years started to listen to Poulenc, the French composer. Although he is very modern, he's also, I find, anyway, very charming. I like his chamber music. There's some music for two pianos that I enjoy very much. I did go and see his opera, which was not so charming; I found that quite hard to take, quite difficult. But what I like best of all are his songs. There are quite a lot of them, and some of them, I mean, they're very short, they're like pop records from the 1950s, a minute and a half, some of them. But they're almost ditties, but they're very charming and they're quite funny, and one of my favorite albums is a collection of these songs sung by Felicity Lott, and a favorite of mine is the one that is called La Grenouillère.

[Music]

Kaplan Poulenc's La Grenouillère sung by Felicity Lott. A selection of my guest on today's edition of "Mad About Music," best-selling, award winning author, Ken Follett. Let's talk about music in your life today. How often do you go to live performances?

Follett Well, I probably go, I'd say, once every two weeks to a concert. I live in the center of London, so I can walk to Covent Garden, the English National Opera, the Coliseum, Wigmore Hall and the South Bank, Royal Festival Hall and it is one of my favorite things to do. I particularly like - I go to the opera quite a lot, but I particularly like orchestral music in concert. Classical music invites your utmost concentration and yet it's so completely different from what I do all day. What I do all day is, you know, my stories are very heavily plotted. People are always deceiving one another. They're elaborate. I have all these strands to keep in my mind. Music is very simple and it's immediate, and you just concentrate very hard on what's coming in through your ears.

Kaplan Now you mentioned that your preference is for orchestral concerts. Do you have a conductor or two who you particularly admire?

Follett My knowledge of classical music isn't profound enough to enable me to distinguish. I mean, I go hear a familiar piece, and I might think, this is a bit faster than usual. But the subtleties of what the conductor is doing with the orchestra are a little too profound.

Kaplan So it's more the music than a particular interpretation. I'm happy to hear that because we so much focus today on the performance and not the music and we write about music, it's nice to hear someone who thinks that it is the music they go to listen to, and not necessarily how one person performs it, or another. Now, your next work will not be one you would be likely to encounter at Covent Garden, I don't think, because we now come to a portion of our show we call the "wild card," where we permit guests to pick something other than classical music or opera, any genre, jazz, rock, pop and we've had some wonderful selections all over the place. What "wild card" did you bring us today?

Follett Well, it's the Beatles. And I was 13 when the Beatles' first record came out, "Love Me, Do." So I'm absolutely of the generation that adored them and loved them, and still do. Do you know I was walking down Piccadilly yesterday and I saw on a stand some calendars for sale. And one of them was the Beatles' calendar, 2004. This is a group that haven't played together for 35 years, and two of them are dead, and you can still buy a Beatles calendar! That's the kind of impact they had, and I'm sure it's my generation who will be buying that calendar. Of course, they were vilified by the older generation in the 60s and that was one of the things that appealed to us so much. But I remember people saying that they couldn't sing, and the piece that I have chosen, it's a beautiful ballad by the Beatles called "Because," and there's an a cappella version of it, without the backing music, which I think shows off the Beatles' voices at their absolute best.

[Music]

Kaplan "Because," by the Beatles. Performed unaccompanied. A selection of Ken Follett, my guest today on "Mad About Music" - his "wild card" selection. When we return we will hear Ken Follet's final selection.

[Station Break]

Kaplan This is Gilbert Kaplan with best-selling author Ken Follett. Now, it's interesting that in selecting the Beatles, you picked this a cappella work, unaccompanied by any instruments, to demonstrate that the Beatles had remarkably good singing ability, in tune, not just the style of their music. This is very much, to me, a sound of a British choir and the tradition of British a cappella choirs is very great. Do you like choral music in general?

Follett Yes, I particularly like it unaccompanied. I'm Welsh, I was born in Cardiff and there's a tradition of Welsh choirs, particularly male voice choirs. My mother remembered lying in bed as a little girl and hearing the miners coming off the night shift, early in the morning and singing as they walked through the streets of the town, Mountain Ash in South Wales. And it was always - it was, I remember her telling me that, it was obviously quite an emotional, profound memory for her. And we all sang, when we went to church, everybody sang in four-part harmony.

Kaplan You say you did sing in church, in part-singing. Did you ever actually join a choir or chorus?

Follett No, but for many years my friend Douglas Adams, the writer, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, used to have a Christmas party which he called "real carols," and everybody had to sing in harmony, and there was a conductor, a professional musician, would conduct us all, and Douglas chose the most difficult arrangements of all the Christmas carols! And I just loved that, it was such fun, and lots of musicians used to come, David Gilmore from Pink Floyd used to show up for those parties. And various other people. And I - Douglas sadly died a couple of years ago - but I have continued to sing in four-part harmony in my adulthood.

Kaplan Well, let's turn to your next selection, we've gone through singing, we've gone through choirs, we've gone through guitars, and now we come to the violin, a Mozart violin concerto, one of his very early ones.

Follett Well, you know, I feel, when I think about what I do as a creative artist, and what we creative artists do for people, in my more optimistic moments, I think what we do is, we create happiness. After all, when you listen to a piece of music and enjoy it, or look at a wonderful picture, or get deeply absorbed in a novel, it's pure happiness, isn't it? It's pure delight, when it's good. And if you had to pick the person who has brought the most happiness to the most people in the history of the human race, it would have to be Mozart. All those tunes, such good tunes, such a variety of tunes. Mozart is probably the greatest man ever, in my pantheon. And what I like about him - it's like a fix, you know, there's a rush. When this Violin Concerto No. 3 begins, it begins so happily, it makes you want to jump up and say, "Yes! Life is just terrific, isn't it? Thank you, Mozart!"

[Music]

Kaplan The first movement of Mozart's Third Violin Concerto, performed by Gidon Kremer with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, led by Nikolaus Harnoncourt, the final selection of my guest on "Mad About Music", author Ken Follett. Now as we get toward the conclusion of the show I'd like to ask you whether you had ever considered using a musician as one of the principal characters in one of your books? It could be a violinist like we just heard or it could be a conductor. I remember there was a book about a pianist who doubled as an assassin. And every time he had created an effective kill that he thought was just perfect, he never played better. He'd walk into the concert hall and sit down, it was magic. Could you imagine a musician as your principal character in your next book?

Follett I remember that story. I can't remember the author, but it was very good, because of course this guy had the perfect cover for traveling all over the world and going to all these capitals. Yes, that was a brilliant story. However, it is very difficult to write about music. I often feel that when authors try, they fall down. You just can't. If the music is part of the story, it's pretty impossible to render it. The person wants to hear it; he doesn't want to hear you describe it. So I think music is quite difficult to deal with in that way, but a musician as a character in a thriller is not a bad idea. In fact, I can imagine a war story in which the musician is an agent, perhaps performing in Germany and Poland and France, in occupied Europe. And in fact, transmitting information somehow back to the Allies. That's not a bad idea, you know, thank you for that, I'm glad I did this show!

Kaplan Well, I expect to get our usual royalty for that, and we'll look forward, we will look for that book, and on that note, Ken Follett, may I thank you for appearing today? You've been a wonderful guest, and fascinating to the way music weaves in and out of your life. This is Gilbert Kaplan for "Mad About Music."

[Credits]

About Ken Follett
A storyteller - born or bred?

The Early Years
Ken was born in Cardiff, Wales on 5 June 1949, the first of Martin and Veenie Follett's three children. In post-war Britain, not only were toys a scarcity for the Follett children, but their devoutly religious parents did not permit them to watch television, go to the cinema or even listen to the radio. The young Ken's sources of entertainment were the many stories told to him by his mother -- and the fantasy and adventure he created in his own imagination. He began reading at an early age; books became his greatest pleasure and the local library his favourite place.

"I didn't have many books of my own and I've always been grateful for the public library. Without free books I would not have become a voracious reader, and if you are not a reader you are not a writer."

When he was ten his family moved to London, where he completed his schooling. He then studied philosophy at University College; a seemingly surprising choice for the son of a tax inspector, but an obvious one for Ken given his religious upbringing and the many questions he had as a result. He believes the choice shaped his future as a writer.

"There is a real connection between philosophy and fiction. In philosophy you deal with questions like: We're sitting at this table, but is the table real?' A daft question, but in studying philosophy, you need to take that sort of thing seriously and have an off-the-wall imagination. Writing fiction is the same."

Questioning what was real within a lecture hall was one thing; quite another reality for Ken was becoming a husband and father. When his girlfriend Mary fell pregnant, the young couple married at the end of Ken's first term at university and their son, Emanuele, was born in July 1968.

"It's not the kind of thing that you plan to do when you are 18 but once it had happened it was very thrilling. I felt doubly rich because I was having a great time at university and it was also tremendously exciting to have a little baby and take care of him. We loved him and he was very endearing. He still is."

It was also at university, in the heady atmosphere of the late 60s when the war with Vietnam was underway, that Ken began developing a passion for politics.

"Politics was discussed all the time. It seemed as if student protest was a world-wide movement. Although we were young and had the arrogance of youth, nevertheless when you look at the issues that we fought over, I think by and large we were right."

Starting out
In September 1970, fresh out of university, a three-month graduate journalism course set him on a writer's path. He began as a reporter for the South Wales Echo in Cardiff, and then, following the birth of daughter Marie-Claire in 1973, as a columnist for the Evening News in London.

When he did not "make the grade as the hot-shot investigative reporter" he'd imagined he might be, Ken started writing fiction at night and on weekends. In 1974 he left newspapers and joined a small London publisher, Everest Books.

His after-hours writing led to the publication of several books, none of which sold very well, but throughout those years he was encouraged and advised by an American literary agent, Al Zuckerman. Then came the time came when they both knew that Ken had a winner and Zuckerman said: "This novel is going to be huge, and you are going to have tax problems".

The Big Time
It was Eye of the Needle that catapulted Ken to best-seller status. Published in 1978, it won the Edgar award, and has sold more than 10 million copies. The book's success enabled Ken to quit his day job, rent a villa in the South of France and devote himself full-time to writing his next novel, Triple.

"I was very worried that I might not be able to do it again. It happens to quite a lot of writers. They write one terrific book and then the next one is not so good and doesn't sell quite so well, the third one is not very good and they never write a fourth. I was conscious that might easily happen to me, and so I worked very hard on Triple to try to make it as exciting as Eye of the Needle."

The Folletts returned to England three years later because Ken missed the films and theatre and all the stimulation that London offered, and he wanted to vote. They settled in Surrey where Ken became involved with fundraising and campaigning for the Labour Party. It was then that he met and fell in love with the Party's local branch secretary, Barbara Broer, whom he married in 1985.

The couple now live in Hertfordshire in an old rectory, which is also home-from-home for Ken's son and daughter, Barbara's son and two daughters and their partners and children.

Barbara is Member of Parliament for Stevenage, a seat she won in 1997 and to which she was returned with a handsome majority in the 2001 elections. Ken helps her campaign and works with her on other Party activities. In spite of his political commitment, Ken has never allowed politics to take precedence over writing. He begins writing after breakfast and continues until about 4 pm: "I am a morning person. As soon as I'm up, I want to get to my desk. In the evening I want to relax and eat and drink and do all that sort of low-tension stuff."

On the racks
Ken has written 14 novels in the past 23 years: 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.

He then surprised readers by radically changing course with The Pillars of the Earth (1989), a novel about building a cathedral in the Middle Ages. It received rave reviews and was on the New York Times best-seller list for 18 weeks. It also topped best-seller lists in Canada, Britain and Italy, and was on the German best-seller list for six years.

The next three novels, Night Over Water (1991), A Dangerous Fortune (1993) and A Place Called Freedom (1995) were more suspense 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) and Jackdaws (2001), a World War II thriller about a group of women parachuted into France to destroy a vital telephone exchange.

Ken's latest novel, Hornet Flight (2002), is about a daring young Danish couple who escape to Britain from occupied Denmark in a rebuilt Hornet Moth biplane - with vital information about a new German radar system.

Visual delights
Eye of the Needle was made into a film and four of Ken's novels have been made into television mini-series: The Key to Rebecca, Lie Down with Lions, On Wings of Eagles and The Third Twin - the rights for which were sold to CBS for $1,400,000, a record price.

Wine, woman and song
The great pleasures in Ken's life, other than the people he loves, are good food and wine, Shakespearian drama and even more importantly, music.

Music has always featured largely in his life -- both his parents play the piano. Ken plays bass guitar in a band called "Damn right I've got the Blues" and has recorded on the "Don't Quit Your Day Job" label -- appropriate for a man who makes no exaggerated claims about his musical talents:

"I've always played the guitar quite badly. I think it's quite important to have something that you do badly, especially if you are the over-achiever type of personality. Playing in a band is very sensory and writing is completely cerebral. My books are closely plotted, like all popular fiction, so I am always thinking about the mechanics of the story. Playing in a band is completely sensory. There's a connection from the ears to the fingertips that does not pass through the conscious brain."

Time to give
In a busy life focused on work, family and politics, Ken also manages to find time for involvement in his community. He is President of the Dyslexia Institute, Council Member of the National Literacy Trust, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Chair of Governors of Roebuck Primary School & Nursery, Patron of Stevenage Home-Start, director of Stevenage Leisure Ltd and Vice-President of Stevenage Borough Football club.

Best-sellers
Eye of the Needle (1978)
Triple (1979)
The Key to Rebecca (1980)
The Man from St Petersburg (1982)
On Wings of Eagles (1983)
Lie Down with Lions (1986)
The Pillars of the Earth (1989)
Night Over Water (1991)
A Dangerous Fortune (1993)
A Place called Freedom (1995)
The Third Twin (1996)
The Hammer of Eden (1998)
Code to Zero (2000)
Jackdaws (2001)
Hornet Flight (2002)

Chronology
1949 - Born on 5th June in Cardiff, Wales, to Martin and Veenie Follet
1967 - Completed 'A' levels and entered university
1968 - Marriage to Mary and birth of son, Emanuele
1970 - Graduated from University College, London with B.A. in Philosophy
1971 - General reporter on South Wales Echo
1973 - Birth of daughter, Marie-Claire. Columnist on Evening News in London
1974 - Began working at Everest Books, London. First two novels published: The Big Needle and The Big Black under pseudonym 'Symon Myles'
1975 - The Big Hit by 'Symon Myles' and The Shakeout by Ken Follet
1976 - The Modigliani Scandal by 'Zachary Stone'; The Mystery Hideout by Ken Follet; The Power Twins by 'Martin Martinsen' and Amok: King of Legend by 'Bernard L Ross'
1977 - Paper Money by 'Zachary Stone'
1978 - Capricorn One by 'Bernard L. Ross' and Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett
1979 - Triple
1980 - The Key to Rebecca
1982 - The Man from St. Petersburg
1983 - On Wings of Eagles
1985 - Marriage to Barbara Broer
1986 - Lie Down with Lions
1989 - The Pillars of the Earth
1991 - Night Over Water
1993 - A Dangerous Fortune
1995 - A Place Called Freedom
1996 - The Third Twin
1998 - The Hammer of Eden
2000 - Code to Zero
2001 - Jackdaws
2002 - Hornet Flight