Ken Follett

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and one, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:30

My Castaway this week is a novelist. His books are huge bestsellers, and he commands huge advances for writing them. A new one appears every two years, carefully structured, rigorously plotted, the products of an author possessed by a relentless application to his craft.

Presenter0:46

Brought up in Wales, his parents were Plymouth brethren, who denied their children access to television, cinema, and popular music. He's long broken free from such a cloistered life, not least as one of the high profile supporters of New Labour, a role which eventually brought him into conflict with the party hierarchy and led him to attack Tony Blair and his entourage.

Presenter1:06

Married to a high profile Labour MP, he's now back doing what he does best, writing books that people want to read. I want to entertain you, he says. I definitely want you to be on the edge of your seat. He is Ken Follett. The truth is, Ken, that life was never the same once you discovered James Bond, wasn't it?

Ken Follett1:25

That's right. When I was twelve years old I read my first James Bond story. It was Casino Royale. And I was just blown away. I mean I had been reading children's adventure stories and I had read all the ones in the junior library and they admitted me earlier than normal to the adult library.

Presenter1:44

Did your parents allow this?

Ken Follett1:46

I'm not sure they knew and I I discovered Ian Fleming

Ken Follett1:51

And these wonderfully exciting stories. This man who knew everything. He knew about all the things I was curious about as a twelve year old boy. He knew about cars, guns, cocktails, and most of all, of course, he knew about women, which was

Presenter2:08

You about kissing?

Ken Follett2:08

About kissing. The greatest mystery of all. And when, about ten years later, I tried to write a novel myself, I tried to recreate the kind of excitement and give the reader the kind of pleasure that I had got from James Bond.

Presenter2:23

Mm. But did you then, therefore, at the age of twelve, decide'cause you were going to be a missionary, weren't you? Or did you suddenly say, Hey, shucks to this missionary business, I'm going to be a writer of thrillers?

Ken Follett2:34

No, um reading James Bond didn't make me want to be a writer at that point. It made me want to be a secret agent at that point. It wasn't until later that I realized that I was never going to have ice blue eyes and a cruel mouth.

Presenter2:49

But you could raise one eyebrow.

Ken Follett2:51

But I could well that yes, that technique I learned, the James Bond raising one eyebrow, I can still do when called upon.

Presenter2:57

But what is interesting is when you did begin to write, and you know, we'll I want to talk to you in more detail about it all, but when you did begin, you didn't put your your real name on the book, did you? I I think you wrote ten before you put your name on one. Did you spot that they just weren't good enough?

Ken Follett3:11

Well, I had an agent in those days who suggested that I use a pseudonym for the first book that I had written, because, she said, you might later want to write something better. I was a bit taken aback by that at the time, because

Presenter3:24

You thought you were writing your best.

Ken Follett3:26

Well, I was writing my b you know, I mean, everybody always does write their best. But of course, as time went by I realized that more was required of me than I had given.

Presenter3:36

But it took ten, which is amazing. And then the eleventh in 1978 was The Eye of the Needle, which we'll hear about in a minute. But tell me about your first record.

Ken Follett3:37

But yeah.

Ken Follett3:45

Well, this is the music of my childhood, the Triorchie Male Voice Choir. My mother remembered lying in bed as a child, early in the morning, and hearing the miners coming back from the night shift, singing as they walked through the streets of the town where she lived, Mountain Ash. And she used to say, and they could sing as well as the Triorchie.

Ken Follett4:09

And this song was a song that could make my mother cry. It's called Mavanwi.

Speaker 44:15

Living born among

Speaker 45:01

Deep

Presenter5:13

Me Vanwi sung by the Triawi Male Choir conducted by J. H. Davis, great staff now.

Ken Follett5:18

It's wonderful.

Presenter5:19

Oh

Presenter5:20

Let's talk about Eye of the Needle, this this turning point novel, the first one you put your name to. Set in the Second World War, German spy with a stiletto up his sleeve, the needle, at large in this country, charged with finding out the plans for D D and reporting them back. Why was that one the breakthrough? What was different about it from the ten that went before?

Ken Follett5:39

Eye of the Needle was the first book that I researched that had what people call texture, a feel for the grain of every day life. It was also the book in which I solved the problem of pace. As a newspaper reporter I had learned to write very briskly, learned on the South Wales Echo.

Ken Follett5:57

And it took me a long time to unlearn that brisk newspaper style.

Presenter6:01

But you had a mentor in all of this, didn't you?

Ken Follett6:03

Yes. By this time I had an American agent called Al Zuckerman who used to give me little homilies on what it takes and you know, one of my early novels, he wrote a note to me about it and he wrote, None of these people has a past.

Presenter6:17

Hmm.

Presenter6:18

But it's interesting'cause he'd written a book, hadn't he, How to Write a Blockbuster.

Presenter6:22

And of course, the question that begs is: if he'd written that book, why hadn't he written the block buzz? Why is it you who ended up writing the block buzzers and not him? Well, of course.

Ken Follett6:30

Well I can only speak for myself and I think what I do that people enjoy is I structure the story very carefully so that there is always something happening that makes you want to turn the page. But you're quite right. In the end there is something that you can't quite get hold of in an author's head.

Presenter6:52

In an author's head. I wonder if it isn't something that you said earlier. You said whenever you write, you write your best, you do your best. And if you got a serious and inverted commas writer, say, write a blockbuster, they would write it cynically. They say, Oh, I know what's supposed to happen there. Oh, yeah, we better have a bit of action here. You know, it's all that formula stuff. It doesn't work if you do it cynically and you don't do it cynically.

Ken Follett7:13

You're quite right. You have to take it absolutely seriously. And although the characters in my stories aren't the most profoundly written characters you'll ever come across in literature by any means, they're the best I can do and any less and peop you're quite right, people would see through it.

Presenter7:30

Hmm.

Presenter7:31

Just give me in a nutshell the headlines of this turning point of your success. Al Zuckerman says, Great, I have the needle, good book, I'm going to sell it in America. Give me the South Wales Echo headline on this.

Ken Follett7:42

Well the big moment was the day that they auctioned the paperback rights and Al called me and he said the auction is going on at the moment and it's reached half a million dollars but it hasn't finished. Needless to say that was absolutely mind-blowing and I went out and bought champagne and invited the neighbours in and Al called again at about ten o'clock and said well it's finished. It's reached $800,000 and my share of that was about 70% so I had made enough money to live on for the rest of my life.

Presenter8:17

Next record.

Ken Follett8:19

My parents got a radio in 1959 when I was ten years old, and the BBC Light programme came into my life, and it was on the light programme that I heard my first twelve bar blues, and I think it was probably Ray Charles playing the electric piano and singing What Did I Say?

Speaker 48:37

Every mama don't just treat me wrong.

Speaker 48:40

Come and love you, baby, all right long, all right long.

Speaker 48:44

Hey, hey.

Speaker 48:47

Alright.

Speaker 48:53

See the girl with the diamond ring?

Speaker 48:56

She knows how to shake that thing alright now

Speaker 49:01

Hey, hey.

Speaker 49:03

Hey.

Presenter9:06

Ray Charles improvising there with what I say. So we're back, Ken Follett, in the bosom of your family, hearing that, probably sneakily with the radio upper corner. Um Plymouth Brethren, Evangelical Christianity. How how strict was it? How unworldly was your life?

Ken Follett9:22

When I was a child in Cardiff, we didn't have a T V or radio or record player, and I wasn't allowed to go to the movies, which I consider now

Ken Follett9:31

An outrage,'cause all my friends went to the pictures every Saturday morning.

Ken Follett9:36

And I was also you know, we went to church three times on Sunday. I was bored to death by going to services in those days.

Presenter9:44

But when did you turn your back on it all? And when did you because you did, I mean, you shunned reli you don't have a religion now. When did you turn your back on it? Well, it was round about.

Ken Follett9:47

You shun the

Ken Follett9:50

Well it was round about what when I reached what people call the age of reason. I never believed in my parents' religion after about the age of seventeen or eighteen. It was a a conflict for me in my teenage and it was something that I was very concerned about. But at some point during my university years it just all fell away and I didn't miss it at all.

Presenter10:11

So you shunned religion. You could argue that you'd shunned many of the other values that you've been brought up with because, you know, you now enjoy expensive clothes and flash cars.

Ken Follett10:20

I'm a Sybarite. I like luxury and yet cashmere socks and

Presenter10:21

I like

Presenter10:22

Cash.

Presenter10:23

And do you? And can you do that without guilt despite your affairs?

Ken Follett10:24

Yeah.

Ken Follett10:29

I can, and I'm not quite sure why. I ought to be um sitting in Le Gavroche feeling dreadful because of all the money it's costing, shouldn't I? But I don't at all, I just like it.

Presenter10:36

But I don't

Presenter10:38

What about your parents? What about I mean, did your mother read your books? She's not around anymore, is she? But did she? My mother died.

Ken Follett10:45

My mother died three or four years ago and mum had a problem with my books because

Presenter10:50

We call that sex and violence.

Ken Follett10:52

Absolutely. I sent her the first one. She read half of the first page and came across a swear word and didn't read any more. And for many years she didn't read any more. But when they came out in Reader's Digest, condensed books editions, she would read them because the Reader's Digest take out all the swear words and the love scenes. And I mean they were both uh dad's still alive they're both terrifically proud that their son had written these stories. They took great pleasure in that. My mum would occasionally say to me, Well, why? Somebody would say, My God in the book and my mum would say, Why'd you have to put blasphemy in? Mum, that's the way people talk.

Presenter11:30

Record number three.

Ken Follett11:32

In nineteen sixty six the Beatles brought out their best ever album, Revolver. In the same year I fell in love with Mary Elson, a girl at our local church, who was also in the Plymouth Brethren.

Ken Follett11:45

And we eventually were married. We were married for seventeen years and we're still friends. And we had two children. And my nickname for our first child, my son, is Sunshine. So this record is Good Day Sunshine.

Speaker 411:59

Sunshine Good day, Sunshine.

Speaker 412:06

Good day sunshine, I need to laugh.

Speaker 412:11

And when the sun is out.

Speaker 412:14

I got something I can laugh about. I feel good.

Speaker 412:19

In a special way.

Speaker 412:22

I'm in love and it's a sunny day.

Speaker 412:26

Good day sunshine

Presenter12:28

The Beatles and Good Day Sunshine. So you got married Ken at eighteen because Mary was pregnant. Yes. Both sets of parents, Plymouth brethren. It must have been terrible.

Ken Follett12:40

To tell you the truth, we were in love and we probably would have got married anyway, and we probably wouldn't have got married when I was while I was at university, but it was not that devastating.

Speaker 412:51

Yeah.

Ken Follett12:51

Yeah. Of course, people were shocked, and I'm sure people thought I was a dreadful sinner and was going to hell and all that sort of thing. But they came to the wedding.

Presenter12:58

But they came to the wedding.

Presenter13:01

So you emerged from university with a degree, a wife, a a a son and a guitar, because you were doing all of that too, I think, at the time. Did you get as far as the caftan?

Ken Follett13:10

No no, but I had an afro. I had curly black hair in those days and I grew it like a hedge and uh yeah, I looked like Jimi Hendrix.

Presenter13:20

But you did get a proper job. You became a journalist, you see.

Ken Follett13:23

Yes, I I became a trainee reporter on the South Wales Echo.

Presenter13:26

Mm. And was that because by then you knew you wanted to write, write in some form? Were you always planning to sort of do the day job and and then write books on site? No.

Ken Follett13:36

No, I wasn't. It took me a long, long time to realise that the only thing I could really do well was imaginative writing. I went into journalism because at university I'd got very interested in politics. I was at university in the late 60s. It was the time of student demos. And I saw journalism as a way to continue to be interested in and influential upon politics. Needless to say, as a junior reporter on the South Wales Echo, I had no influence on even local politics. But there we are.

Presenter14:08

How did you get into how did you start writing in that case? Creative writing?

Ken Follett14:12

But while I was on the echo I wrote a few short stories in the evening, and a little bit later when I was on the evening news I wrote a novel and it was published.

Presenter14:20

How much then, let me ask you this, how much was it the desire to write fiction, to write a book?

Presenter14:26

To be a creative writer, and how much was it a desire to be very rich and very famous?

Ken Follett14:32

I certainly had the need to tell these stories. And, you know, I wrote all those short stories, even though nobody read them but my family and the people next door. But it was also fueled by a vision of myself in a Rolls-Royce surrounded by adoring fans saying sign, sign, sign. I mean, that was part of my dream.

Presenter14:56

Have you got there? More music, more music.

Ken Follett15:01

When Marie Clare, my daughter, was two years old, she walked on the record player and destroyed my favourite album, which was Stevie Wonder's Greatest Hits. So to remind me of Marie Clare at the age of two, this is Stevie Wonder singing My Sharia More.

Speaker 415:17

Won't you tell me how could you hate on?

Speaker 415:22

Love behind every smile I wore.

Speaker 415:26

I wish that you were mine.

Speaker 415:32

Bye, bye bye.

Presenter15:47

Masharia Moor, sung by Stevie Wonder. Um, Ken Follett, you may have turned your back on your parents' beliefs and values, but I guess the way in which you work has a lot to do with either your father or or your mother, I don't know which. This kind of, as I called it in the introduction, this relentless application to your craft, there's a strong work ethic there, isn't there?

Ken Follett16:07

Yes, it comes from my father. When I was a boy in Cardiff, my father was uh working um for the Inland Revenue and studying in the evenings to do his accountancy exams. He's a became a tax inspector. So my picture of what a man does, as it were, is he goes into the front room and he sits at a table with pencils and files and books and studies. So my imagination comes from mum.

Ken Follett16:33

But my work ethic comes from Dad.

Presenter16:35

But you have this very set pattern. You produce a book every two years. This is what you do, and you know how you spend the first X months plotting it out. Do you then show somebody that plot?

Ken Follett16:37

Simple

Ken Follett16:42

Yeah.

Ken Follett16:45

Yes, all the time. Generally during the first year, at about three different stages, I'll show the outline of the story to my agent, my editors and any members of the family who are willing to read it.

Presenter16:58

So it takes you a year to do the outline.

Ken Follett16:59

Yes.

Presenter17:01

But

Presenter17:01

Pillars of the Earth, I have to mention, is quite different. I mean, what you've just been describing is the process of these thrillers. How many have you done now?

Ken Follett17:10

I've written thirteen successful books and so.

Presenter17:13

Clear.

Ken Follett17:15

Twelve of those are adventure stories and one is The Pillars of the Earth.

Presenter17:18

Quite, because the others of this two-year production line, Pillars of the Earth, was different. You did it alongside and round about. You came to it, you went away from it. It is quite different. It is a

Presenter17:29

It's a blockbuster. I mean, it's over a thousand pages, isn't it? And it's about.

Speaker 117:32

Yeah.

Ken Follett17:32

Danny

Presenter17:33

It's set in the Middle Ages, it's an epic, and it's essentially at the heart of it is the building of a cathedral. Where did that come from?

Ken Follett17:41

As a boy, of course, a church for me was a very plain room with with no pictures on the walls and just rows of chairs. At some point I went into Peterborough Cathedral.

Presenter17:44

Boomers.

Ken Follett17:54

and was quite blown away by the architecture.

Ken Follett17:57

I wanted to write the story that would explain to people how these terrific, beautiful, ageless

Ken Follett18:06

buildings came into our lives. Now, a lot of people thought this was the worst idea they'd ever heard. Some of my friends, you know, would say it.

Ken Follett18:15

It's about what is it about it's building building a church? A church? Building a chur

Ken Follett18:19

Um

Presenter18:20

My co-publishers, though, then my publisher.

Ken Follett18:21

My publishers would say, you know, you've had a lot of success with these thrillers.

Presenter18:27

Has it not gone to your head?

Ken Follett18:27

Yeah.

Presenter18:28

Yeah.

Ken Follett18:29

That's right. When it first came out, um the reaction of the world was well the world was underwhelmed by the Pillars of the Earth. But then over the years it c became kind of a cult. And I was just looking at the the German bestseller list the other day and it's now made 450 appearances on the German bestseller list.

Presenter18:53

Micro number five.

Ken Follett18:55

In 1983 Barbara came into my life, and we eventually got married in 1985.

Ken Follett19:04

She brought with her into my life three step children, who I eventually came to love very dearly indeed, and they're very beloved.

Ken Follett19:14

And also Africa, because Barbara had a traumatic history in South Africa. Her ex-husband had been killed by the apartheid government. He was murdered. And she had been told that she was next on the list, and so she had fled from South Africa. And so my next record is the South African National Anthem in Cozy Sikhale.

Speaker 419:37

To see the people.

Speaker 419:43

Are you motherly so?

Speaker 419:49

But in the top

Speaker 419:54

Bossing, single Hindela.

Presenter20:06

Cozy Sikalele Africa, God Bless Africa, South Africa's national anthem from the original soundtrack of the film Cry Freedom. So you met Barbara, now Barbara Follett, MP for Stevenage, in 1983, in the Labour Party in Farnham in Surrey. It was kind of love among the activists.

Ken Follett20:21

Yeah.

Ken Follett20:23

At a Labour Party meeting how romantic

Presenter20:25

And you both left your respective spouses eventually.

Ken Follett20:27

We did. We fell in love. We were both married and both actually happily married at the time. It was the worst thing I've ever done and the best thing I've ever done. It caused enormous pain to a lot of people, including my children, which I will never cease to regret. But it also brought enormous happiness to me and to Barbara. And eventually the family did hold together.

Presenter20:56

But i what is interesting is, and it is uh a bit like the teenage pregnancy we were discussing earlier, that you you you faced the music, you you came clean and and and you moved on, and it does seem to be

Presenter21:08

If you like. I don't want to put too much into it, but it's your your brand of morality, if you like.

Ken Follett21:14

Well, um I'm glad you think so. Um and I suppo I don't

Presenter21:17

I've got an ulterior motive for things above.

Ken Follett21:19

I think so.

Ken Follett21:20

I don't think of myself as a highly moral person. I think of I've you know, I've done a lot of wrong things, but I suppose I'm concerned about

Ken Follett21:29

Right and wrong, and I suppose that comes from my upbringing.

Presenter21:30

And I supp

Presenter21:32

Well, obviously I mentioned it because it has a bearing on on your public fallout with the hierarchy in the Labour Party, which I I want to come to.

Presenter21:38

Because you and Barbara together became very much part of the the the architects of of of New Labour, the New Labour project. First of all as as image consultants. Well, Barbara did that in the main, but I think you helped.

Ken Follett21:52

Barbara and I used to run training courses for people who wanted to enter public life. We were part of what was then called the Southern Region Training Team.

Presenter22:02

And you said, get off those donkey jackets.

Ken Follett22:05

We certainly. I mean, that was a very minor part of it. The most important thing we did was we had professional television journalists come in and interview them on video and then play back the video and talk to them about how they presented themselves and that sort of thing.

Presenter22:21

But but then you moved into fundraising, which was somewhere where you were even more active, I think, because you became The leader of this kind of, I don't know whether it was a sort of thousand pound club or ten thousand pound club, finding out people who would come forward and put their money where their belief is.

Ken Follett22:36

That's right. I went to Washington with Jack Cunningham and Peter Mandelson and Philip Gould and we talked to the Democrats about how they raised money. And the Democrats said, Well, if you don't ask for it, you certainly won't get it. So I came back thinking, Well, we've got to ask people. But it was very shocking in those days that the Labour Party would hold a fundraising dinner and ask people to pay £500 for their dinner. That was considered quite outrageous by a lot of people. Now it's commonplace.

Presenter23:00

Not

Presenter23:05

Yes, but it was considered that it lacked integrity. It's not what you did if you were a true socialist. Yes, absolutely.

Ken Follett23:09

Yes, that's a good idea.

Ken Follett23:11

No, because I see that as a kind of cosmetic thing. The Labour Party, in order to campaign, needed millions of pounds. And we had to get it somewhere, and we weren't going to get it from poor people because they didn't have it. So it didn't bother me, and I've always had something of a thick skin about that kind of thing. It doesn't. I don't really mind when the News of the World publishes a picture of me in the nude on a beach in the Caribbean. I just think it's funny. I'm a plump middle-aged person, and who cares, you know? So I suppose I was the one who kind of had the chutzpah.

Ken Follett23:46

To do this

Presenter23:48

We've got number six.

Ken Follett23:50

This is, I suppose, about what an artist does, and I feel that what we

Ken Follett23:56

Produce.

Ken Follett23:58

is happiness.

Ken Follett23:59

Because when you stand in front of a picture and you go, Oh wow

Ken Follett24:03

Or you're lost in a play. It's instant happiness. And

Ken Follett24:10

The person who does that for me best of all is Mozart.

Speaker 424:34

Uh

Presenter25:13

The opening of Mozart's violin concerto, number three in G major, played by Anne Sophie Mutto with the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Herbert von Karrion. So everything went wonderfully well with the Labour Party, Ken, and and your marriage to Barbara was and is very happy and the books were selling well and Barbara was lined up for a a good seat in Stevenish fundraising was very successful as you say. You were very influential, had a direct climb to the the power, the heart of the Labour Party. And then one day in nineteen ninety five its new leader, Tony Blair, comes to dinner at your house in Chelsea. The press are on the doorstep.

Presenter25:46

I dunno. Does he get miffed? What happens?'Cause after that you're dropped.

Ken Follett25:49

Yes. I mean, it is a little weakness of Tony's that he he can be petulant, and Mift is exactly the word for what he was when he walked into my house, having run the gauntlet of tabloid photographers outside my house, which he hadn't been expecting.

Presenter26:07

But had you tipped them off, is that what he was saying, being miffed with you?

Ken Follett26:09

I have met the last six leaders of the Labour Party and the last three of them have had dinner at my house and we had never had this kind of thing before and I certainly had no interest in having daily mail photographers outside my house. So it certainly wasn't we who had tipped them off. You know there were twenty odd people to dinner and they had all been invited six weeks earlier. They all knew they were going to meet Tony Blair and I'm sure they all told all their friends. It's not surprising that the news got out.

Presenter26:38

But what happened after I mean, did did the Blairs write and say, Thank you, but we never want to see you again?

Ken Follett26:43

No. What happened was that stories started appearing in the newspapers saying that Tony Blair is distancing himself from the Loveys, and my name was mentioned in every one of those stories.

Speaker 426:55

Hmm.

Ken Follett26:56

And I went to see him and and said, What's all this about? And he said, Oh, well, it's he told me it wasn't coming from his office. I mean, I think the truth is I did everything the Labour Party asked me to do for ten years and then I was kicked in the teeth, so I was a little miffed.

Presenter27:04

Hmm.

Presenter27:12

But you appear to have been, anyway, publicly, both of you, very well behaved about it, because you just got on with your day jobs, didn't you? Just did what you did and and stopped raising money.

Presenter27:22

About five years later, last year, you wrote a pretty coruscating article in the Sunday paper about Tony Blaine, which you called him

Presenter27:30

All sorts of things. You said he was a control freak, you said he was immoral, you said he'd made malicious gossip an everyday tool of modern British Government. Was that you getting your own back finally?

Ken Follett27:41

Well, you know, if this had only happened to me, it would have been a thoroughly trivial thing. But it happened to many people. Most of the Shadow Cabinet in those days, over a period of about five years, found that stories appeared in the Sunday newspapers about them saying that Number 10 was displeased with them or they were doing a bad job and

Ken Follett28:06

All of these stories were planted.

Ken Follett28:09

as part of a kind of internocene war.

Ken Follett28:13

that was going on and I thought the only person who could stop it was Tony himself.

Presenter28:19

But you said more than that. You said that that in fact Alastair Campbell, who was the spin doctor supreme at that time, was just a a rent boy of politics, I think is what you called him. You said that actually Tony Blair was at the heart of all of this.

Ken Follett28:32

Yes, and I think that's true. The boss is the boss, and I felt that he ought to take responsibility for all this.

Presenter28:40

And do you think he heard you? I mean, we live it's difficult. We live in very different times now'cause Tony Bear is obviously now a a main player on the international stage and

Presenter28:49

These petty squabbles probably have to be put to one side. But do you believe that he heard the message that he should stop briefing against people? Or do you think it's just in the nature of modern politics?

Ken Follett28:59

No, I don't think it's in the nature of modern politics. I it doesn't go on in all countries and it doesn't go on under all administrations. And it has to a large extent stopped. I think that's partly because of my article, mainly because after my article appeared so many people agreed with it. And I think that may have shocked number ten.

Presenter29:21

Code number seven.

Ken Follett29:23

Well, as I s we said before, I'm a bit of a Sybarite. I love luxury and a lot of the luxurious things in life are associated with France. So to remind me when I'm on this awful desert island of all the haute cuisine and cashmere sweaters and

Ken Follett29:40

First Class Hotels that I'm not enjoying is a plaintive French song called La Grunouillère.

Speaker 430:00

He slaughter.

Speaker 430:25

Uh

Speaker 430:27

Popar s province.

Speaker 430:34

His Lord can walk.

Speaker 430:40

Are active farmers a growth support?

Presenter30:47

La Gre Nouiere by Poulanc, sung by Felicity Lott, accompanied by Pascal Roger. So it's nostalgia end for the good life, the the champagne and food and fashion. So on a desert island you're just gonna I mean, just fade away, there's none of it.

Ken Follett31:01

I'm going to absolutely hate it.

Ken Follett31:04

The most important thing in my life is the family, and they won't be there.

Ken Follett31:08

I won't want to write if there's no audience. I don't think I'll want to tell a story.

Ken Follett31:13

If I think nobody's ever going to read it.

Ken Follett31:16

But when I was a boy

Ken Follett31:18

And I read The Coral Island by R L Stevenson.

Ken Follett31:22

That was to me the ultimate fantasy.

Ken Follett31:25

Three boys, living on a beach and no school. That was what heaven would be like for me.

Presenter31:31

That's before you became a Sybarite, as you say. But what you I still can't really imagine you just giving up and lying down. You would just plug into that kind of self-belief of yours, wouldn't you?

Ken Follett31:34

But what you I still can't

Ken Follett31:42

Um I'm not very good at all that practical stuff. You know, I can write a novel about building a cathedral, but to build myself a wooden hut I think would be very, very difficult. So this is not going to be a happy time for me, but you're right, I probably would buckle down and survive it somehow.

Presenter31:59

Last piece of music.

Ken Follett32:02

My favorite music of all is the blues.

Ken Follett32:05

I've had enormous pleasure in the last few years being part of a blues band.

Ken Follett32:10

called Damn Right I've Got the Blues. And so my last record is actually the only record that we've made. It's probably the most popular blues song of all time, and it's called Hoochie Coochie Man.

Speaker 432:26

Mojo 2.

Speaker 432:29

Go to John the Conqueror of Root

Ken Follett32:33

I will mess with you.

Speaker 432:37

Uh

Ken Follett32:37

I'm gonna make all you girls

Ken Follett32:41

Take me

Speaker 432:42

In half.

Ken Follett32:45

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 432:45

You all wanna know.

Ken Follett32:46

Oh

Speaker 432:48

And how cheap could you make?

Presenter32:51

I'm your hoochie coochie man and the bass guitarist and the lead vocal there was my castaway Ken Follett and the other members of his band called Damn Right I Got the Blues.

Presenter33:02

So, if you could only take one of these eight records with you on this island, which would you take? That's difficult.

Ken Follett33:08

I would take the Mozart.

Presenter33:10

What about your book? You've got the Bible and Shakespeare there.

Ken Follett33:14

Philosophical Investigations by Ludwig Wittgenstein, which I studied at college in in the sixties. You know, I've been thinking about this book for thirty years. He says things like

Ken Follett33:25

Death is not an event in life.

Ken Follett33:28

I've been thinking about that ever since I read it in the 60s. Absolutely fascinating. So, Wittgenstein, I think.

Ken Follett33:35

If I have to choose one mind to share this wretched exile with me, I think it would be Wittgenstein's.

Presenter33:41

And your luxury.

Ken Follett33:43

Well now, in my version of this fantasy,

Presenter33:46

Yeah.

Ken Follett33:46

The ship that was wrecked just happened to be carrying the entire cellar of a great collector of French wine, so that every week or so a case of Chateau Latour or Court on Charlemagne or Salon le Manile is washed up on the beach, and I have a constant supply of the finest wine in the world.

Presenter34:11

Ken Follett, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Ken Follett34:15

It was a pleasure, thank you.

Speaker 134:23

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/radio four.