Dan Snow's History Hit - Historical Novels with Ken Follett

Episode Date: February 9, 2021

Today, I am joined by best-selling author Ken Follett to discuss his latest book The Evening and the Morning. We also talk about his love of history and the historical research involved with writing one of his novels, his method and how authors have to sometimes use creative license to fill in some of the underwear shaped gaps left in the historical record. This episode was recorded before the US election last year and Ken, a former journalist, also touches on his concerns for his previous occupation with the proliferation of fake news. 

Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History. Now you know that from time to time I like to get a novelist on the podcast,

someone who's not exactly a historian, but spends a lot of time reading and certainly writing about history of sorts. We've had Bernard Cormel on recently, go and listen to that one. And this is Innocent Levain. We've got another best-selling author. He's sold 170 million copies. and 70 million copies. He's written over 35 books. They've been translated into 33 languages. He is Ken Follett. He is very interesting as you'll hear with the medieval period, the early medieval in particular, the Anglo-Saxons, the great upheavals that England and the Isles saw during that period. He began his life as a journalist, so we talk a little bit about that as well. This was a great chance to talk to him. Now, we had some issues with the audio, so we have been sitting on this one, and our brilliant editor, Dougal, has sorted the audio out.

So this was actually recorded before the American election. So you'll hear us talking a little bit about fake news and Donald Trump and the American election. That is why. So thank you to Dougal for sorting all that out. If you want to go and listen to some of the other novelists we've had, we've had, we've had, well, Simon Sebag and Montefiore, a historian, but also when he wrote a great historical novel, we had him on. We've also had Philippa Gregory on. I mean, these are people who've sold the movie

rights to their books. We've seen adaptations of their work on the big screen. They're probably as influential as all the historians we've had on this podcast for shaping popular perceptions of the past. So really important to hear from these people. You can get all those other novelists if you go to historyhit.tv. It's our digital history channel. Best in the world. It's really good. And you go on there, you listen to all the back episodes of this podcast. You can watch hundreds of hours of history documentaries. Interesting this week, in the top five history documentaries, there's not a single Second World War documentary at all in the top five. The most watched documentary this week is about Mansa Musa, West African history. So there you go. Got it all on there. So please go and check that out,

historyhit.tv. It's been relaunched, all going very nicely. And speaking of Philippa Gregory, we had a live event with Philippa Gregory. That was so cool to me. She's awesome. And we are doing live events, don't forget, later this year. If you want to come to one of our live podcast recordings, you're historyhit.com slash tour. In the meantime, everyone, enjoy Ken Follett. Ken, this is a great honour. Thank you very much for coming on the podcast. It's a great pleasure. I'm glad to be here. You've sold millions of books. You're a literary treasure, your publisher lets you anything you want so you can choose all the riches of the world to write about. How do you decide on your

periods and your subjects? Well, I'm looking for a good story, first of all. I'm looking for a moment in history that will be intriguing and fascinating and would generate lots of dramatic scenes. So the evening and the morning is set at the turn of the millennium. It takes place over 10 years around the year 1000. And this is the moment when the Dark Ages come to an end and the Middle Ages begin. So it's a moment of terrific change. It's also, for England in particular, it's a moment when three powerful groups are competing for control of England. The Anglo-Saxons who live here, the Vikings who for the last 200 years have been treating England as a shop where you don't have to pay, and the Normans who are lurking on the other side of the channel, waiting for their moment. And of course, as everybody in Britain knows, it was the Normans who ended up conquering England and ruling it for hundreds of years. And historical research is important to you. Is this a period that you've always loved?

Obviously, your Pillars of the Earth series has sold tens of millions of copies around the world. Is this a period that you immediately think, because I'm a big 18th century, so I think there's great stories there, but for some reason, a thousand years ago is the one that you think is a very fruitful one for you, do you? Well, I thought of this period particularly because I started to think about the town of Kingsbridge before it was a big, important town. Now, I've written three long novels already, which take place partly or mostly in the fictional city of Kingsbridge, the pillars of the earth. The cathedral was built in Kingsbridge. In World Without End, the people of Kingsbridge lived through the Black Death. Terrible plague, even worse than the plague that is afflicting the world right now. And then my last book, A Column of Fire, was about the terrible wars of religion of the 16th century.

And once again, we saw how that affected Kingsbridge. So quite a lot of readers now are very familiar with Kingsbridge and they're quite interested in it. And so am I. We share that. And so I began to think, OK, what about a story which features Kingsbridge when it was just a village or maybe even less than a village, maybe just a sort of settlement with a few houses and a church and a ferry across the river. And part of the story, at any rate, would be how that little place in the back of Beyond was transformed into a thriving and prosperous place that was quite important. And how much research do you do? Is it important to get these things right? Or is it

acceptable to sort of go into the realms of fantasy, do you think? I'd rather not go into the realms of fantasy. I like to get the details right if those details are available. I think correct historical details and realism to the story. I'm also just kind of instinctively horrified by mistakes in a book because I have never forgotten my time as a young newspaper reporter when the old guys in the office were so strict with us about mistakes in the paper. I was on the South Wales Echo. You spelled somebody's name wrong, that person would phone the editor and the editor would speak to them too. And then the editor would call me in and say, look, Follett, if you spell the guy's name wrong, he's going to

think you probably got everything else wrong as well, which was a very good point. And so I've drummed into me as a young man. So I have a sort of visceral horror of getting things wrong. There are occasionally moments when you have to make it up. I basically think if nobody knows the answer to the question, then the historical novelist has got to invent something plausible, something that seems right in the context of the period. And in the evening and the morning, one of the things I couldn't find out about

was what underwear people wore in the Dark Ages. None of my historical consultants had the answer to that. It's not in any books that I could find. I happen to have a book called A History of Underwear, which I've used in the past for exactly this purpose. In different historical periods, what were they wearing underneath? You can easily find out what they were wearing on top. So in the end, I thought, okay, nobody knows. I'm going to say that most of the time they didn't wear any, but they would put on a kind of loincloth if they felt they needed it for things like riding horses, where you can imagine that you would want some cushioning. So that's what I put in. And I still think that's

probably what they did wear. Are your books for people that love history, or is it sort of irrelevant whether people get off on the history bit or not? My books are for people who love a good story. And I just happen to get a lot of good stories by reading history. I think one of the things that's happened is that people have read my novels and got interested in history that way. I get a lot of messages, letters and emails and so on from readers who say, I like the pillars of the earth so much that I started to visit cathedrals and I feel that I understand what I'm looking at because now I remember from the book how this was built and why it was built and so on. So history is exciting. But a

lot of us, me included, were put off in a bit at school because it was taught in a dull way. And if you start reading historical fiction, you can get excited about history. And then you know why it's exciting. And then when you study it, you read history books or you go and look at historically important buildings. Now you're interested in all these details because you understand the dramas that they represent. I got into history because of historical fiction, Mary Stewart, Rosemary Sutcliffe, all these people.

Do you think you're a gateway? Do you think a lot of your fans end up becoming keen historians? They move on to non-fiction. For all the historians listening to this podcast, should they be embracing Ken Follett and attracting future fans? Yeah, I think if you want to know why history is so interesting, a historical novel is a good place to start. I mean, if it doesn't work for you, it doesn't work for you. But for a lot of people, they will find then that these old buildings and old handwritten illuminated books and all that sort of thing will come to life if they know a little bit and can visualize the people who built the buildings and copied out the books and fought the battles.

Where did your love of, well, you say it's story, but you must have a love of history as well. Where did that come from? I started out writing spy stories 45 years ago. As a child? Thank you. Early 20s. So I decided early on that if the spy was doing something that related to a real historical battle or war or revolution, then the story would be much more interesting. If the spy is seeking some intelligence that could change the course of history, change the result of a battle, for example, which after all is what spies are supposed to do. I mean, that is the basic job of a spy, is to discover information which will help the army win. And if I could find real examples of this, real moments in history where the work of the spy could change matters, then the spy wouldn't just be saving his own life or saving his girlfriend. He would actually be doing something that affected the world around.

And that would make the story more significant. It would give the story more weight. So I started reading military history, World War II, World War I, in order to look for these moments when a spy could be really important. And that was really the beginning of my reading history in search of inspiration for fiction. my reading history in search of inspiration for fiction. You're listening to History Hit. More from Ken Follett after this.

Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt, and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,

was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs, and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold.

you do focus on the early medieval and the medieval as well with your books about the anarchy such a great fertile period for a fictional author i'm sure but you've also written about the second world war i mean where else would you like to dip into in the future i wrote a trilogy the century trilogy which attempted to tell the entire story of the 20th century in three long novels, a million words. So I think I might have exhausted 20th century, but there are lots of places to explore. I'm kind of interested in the great reform movement of the early 19th century that resulted in the Reform Act of 1832, because it's really the beginning of genuine democracy in our country. There were elections beforehand, but the electorate was very small, no working class people

could vote and no women could vote, so on and so on. 1832, there was a huge political battle. And the result was that the franchise began to widen and continue to widen for the next 100 years. So one of these days, I might do that. I'll tell you what I'm worried about. A little bit of parliamentary debate goes a long way. I don't want to do too much of that. I can't quite see a novel consisting mainly of parliamentary debate as something that people are going to enjoy so I need to think about different ways to tell that story that would be a terrific moment that would be great

you've got the Bristol riots it was anarchy on the streets it's exciting it felt revolutionary as a long 18th centuryist Ken I urge you to write that book come on you can do it okay the Bristol riots you can do it. Okay, the Bristol riots.

You can do it. There's so much going on while they're debating in the chamber, the people on the streets taking matters into their own hands. It's very exciting. Yeah, well, that's good, because then you see why the argument in Parliament is important to ordinary people. Exactly. That's a good point. You mentioned journalism, and you must look back on those days when you were corrected, you were brought up on someone getting their name wrong, and you must see the kind of fake news and the fake news organizations that sprout up on social media and Facebook and elsewhere. Does that make you worried about your old profession?

Yeah, desperately worried, desperately worried. The newspapers are actually fighting a very energetic rearguard action with papers publishing corrections, you know, fact checking. Papers have whole columns of fact checking. The New York Times has counted how many lies President Trump has told since he was inaugurated, and it's 10,000 or something. It's an enormous, ridiculous number. But that stuff's got to be done, even though 100 million American voters will pretend to disbelieve the New York Times, and instead will believe something that they read on the internet. It's very dismaying. And it's quite hard to fight back, isn't it? I mean, what can we do? People will believe this crap that they read on the internet that's

not supported by any evidence. And they'll sort of dismiss what's in the newspapers, which is supported by enormous resources, enormous numbers of people doing their best to tell the truth. And they dismiss that. They say that that's the fake news. You're fried, really. They've got you coming or going. And they just seem to want to believe some of the most laughable ideas. There was a big thing on the internet about a pizza restaurant in Washington where a paedophile ring was being run by Hillary Clinton in the basement of the restaurant. Now, you wouldn't think five people in America would believe that story, would you? It's almost laughable. One day, a guy burst into that restaurant with a gun in his hand, looking for all these paedophiles. Of course, all that was

there was, you know, 50 people eating pizza. But that myth still goes on. And the local news in the States, which used to have a very dynamic and hugely important local news sector, that's been eviscerated as well. As someone who's worked on one of the proudest locals in the UK it must be tough to see those former sort of powerhouses of these regions just being wiped out their news desks being just decimated yeah well they're not making the money so they can't afford to pay the reporters and so their news coverage diminishes and becomes less interesting and they get into a downward spiral. And many of them are fighting back bravely, but the world changes and you can't always fight against the trends. As you say, for somebody who worked for a newspaper where telling the truth was really important, the whole picture that we see now is very dismaying.

I want to finish up by asking about your lifestyle. We have so many people on this podcast who are aspiring writers. They want to do what you've done, what Bernard Cornwall's done, build this extraordinary career. It seems very daunting from the outside, but now that you've reached the pinnacle, you've written books, read by tens of millions of people, what advice do you have for people sitting down and daring to write that first historical novel? The most important thing is that the reader must have an emotional reaction to the story. And it's kind of amazing, really, because when you read one of my books, you know that it was made up by Follett. Follett got up one morning and decided to write this scene. You know it's not true, and yet

you have this emotional reaction. If I write a sad scene, a tear comes to your eye. And if I write a scary scene, then you find yourself sitting on the edge of your chair. If somebody gets bullied in the story, you feel like banging the table and shouting out, this isn't fair. Readers have an emotional, or they can have an emotional reaction to the story. And that's what we like. That's what makes us turn the page. We get absorbed in this and we start to think about it almost as if it really happened. And once that's happened to the reader, you've got her or him. Once they are emotionally involved with the people in the story, they will turn the pages and they will love the book.

And when they finished it, they'll call their best friend and say, you have to read this new book. I just finished. It's really great. That's what we're looking for. And if the reader doesn't have that emotional reaction, then really nothing else you do matters. The book can be very clever, it can be witty, it can be full of perceptive insights into modern society, but it won't be a big bestseller if it doesn't have that emotional reaction. So I would say

that's the thing to concentrate on. Are you doing something that the reader is really going to care about? And do you think it's easier or harder now? How did you get your first book read? I mean, is it hard to get it to publishers or is it easier now with all the other platforms that are available? Well, there is a big change because you used to be able to send your book to publishers and there was a fair chance that somebody would at least read the first few pages. A lot of publishers no longer even do that. They don't read unsolicited manuscripts, and so agents do it. So nowadays, you really have to send your book to agents. And no, it's not easy to break in. You could send your book to 20 agents, and it may turn out that

none of them would read it, or none of them paid any particular attention. So there is a challenge. But by and large, if you write something great, then sooner or later, somebody's going to read it. And what you need to do is you need to get it to an editor who says, I have got to be the publisher of this book. This book could make my career. I could be discovering a new great bestseller. You've got to excite. It's not enough to do an okay book. You've got to get somebody in a publishing house so excited, they're going to go to their boss and say, look, I found it.

This is the big one. We have to publish it. We have to have a £50,000 advertising campaign. We will be getting bestsellers from this author for the next 40 years. That's the reaction you want. And so that's the thing to have in mind. And just lastly, do you still have that passion? You sit down at the laptop now, perhaps, or I don't know how you write the first draft. How do you generate another book? Or is it just a great joy each time? So far, it's been a great joy every time. And it's not exhausting at all. And I'm an imaginative person. I think all of us are. I did a Zoom with Lee Child last night. We were talking about this. I told Lee that when I was a

boy, I had always been pretending to be a cowboy or a pirate or a captain of a spaceship. And he said he was exactly the same, exactly the same as a boy, always pretending to be somebody else. And I think it's probably true of all of us that we live in our imaginations a lot. And so we're constantly imagining stuff, which is how we dream up. How is this scene going to begin? How is it going to end? What are people going to talk about? What is the background? All of that comes out of our imagination.

But that's only part one. Part two is turning what you've imagined into a logical narrative that will capture people and keep them interested. And that's the craft of the job. And that's where you sit down and you say, I've written this page. Now, if you read that page, why would you turn over? That's the craft of the job. And those two things go together. And I've been doing it for 45 years and I'm not bored yet. And I don't think I ever will be. Well, lots of your fans will be very glad to hear that. Thank you, Ken Follett. The new book is called? The Evening and the Morning.

Go and check it out, everybody. Thank you very much. A pleasure. Good talking to you. I hope you enjoyed the podcast. Just before you go, a bit of a favour to ask. I totally understand if you don't want to become a subscriber or pay me any cash money, makes sense. But if you could just do me a favour, it's for free. Go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcast.

If you give it a five-star rating and give it an absolutely glowing review, purge yourself, give it a glowing review, I'd really appreciate that. It's tough weather, the law of the jungle out there and I need all the fire support I can get.

So that will boost it up the charts. It's so tiresome, but if you could do it, I'd be very, very grateful. Thank you. Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge

beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold.