Interview with Ken Follett | After the cathedrals, the weavers

The last volume of the Pillars of the Earth, Weapons of Light, which has just arrived in bookstores, depicts the cathedral builders of Kingsbridge during industrialization and the Napoleonic Wars. Ken Follett thus closes one of his major historical series, while the catastrophes of the next, The Century, loom on the horizon. Interview.

A pillar of fire ended at the beginning of the 17th^e century. Weapons of Light begins at the end of the 18th century^e. Why this 200 year hiatus?

I start from an episode in history that seems interesting to me. With each of my books, I started with a political, social or economic story that fascinated me. I didn’t find anything notable at the end of the 17th century.^e century. For now, anyway. This is the only reason for this 200 year jump.

What surprised you most about your historical research?

That 7-year-old boys can work 14 hours a day, from 5 a.m. to 7 p.m. My grandfather started in the coal mine at 13 years old. But 7 years is cruel.

You describe the strong reaction of artisans to the first power looms. Currently, there are fears that artificial intelligence threatens employment. And yet industrialization ultimately benefited workers.

Steam automated jobs that people had been doing in their homes for centuries. There is a loom in a museum in Manchester that replaced 560 women. But industrialization eventually raised wages because people worked in a factory rather than in a village often terrorized by a noble (squire) tyrannical. With AI, there will be winners and losers. Car drivers will certainly lose out. But this morning I asked an AI tool to write a Ken Follett-style chapter. It was incredibly bad. Full of clichés, green meadows, hills, the wind of war. That relieved me.

You link the French and American revolutions to the repression of the first unions.

European nations responded with repression to the French Revolution, especially. Because of the threat of the guillotine. Two laws in particular have reduced personal rights in Britain to a level not seen since the Middle Ages.

You lived through the golden age of British trade unionism before Margaret Thatcher, then its annihilation. How does this personal experience color your portrait of the beginning of unions more than 200 years ago?

Unions in the 1970s overreached and became unpopular. The coal strike in the early 1980s was called by Arhtur Cargill, who was far left. They destroyed the industry. Thatcher took advantage of it. It is because of far-left union leaders that today’s low-income earners are paid below the minimum wage.

You mention the tensions between Anglicans and Methodists. How is this interesting, as we live in a post-religious period?

In A pillar of fire people were tortured because of their faith. In the 18th century^e century, there were always tensions, but Methodist churches were not burned. I describe the first steps of religious freedom. Today, we don’t even know who is Catholic, Protestant or atheist.

You end the book with the British victory at Waterloo. But in France, it is a defeat.

I admire Napoleon a lot, even though he was a dictator who killed a lot of people. At Waterloo he had an ambulance corps, whereas British soldiers depended on the women who accompanied them. His soldiers were well fed, unlike the enemy soldiers. But if I had wanted to have a French perspective, I would have needed two or three other characters, to follow them to Italy, to Russia, and I already had six.

You describe an evolution that took several centuries. Does this mean that we should be more lenient with societies where religious intolerance reigns instead of condemning them with UN reports?

We do not have to ask them for permission to write that they do not think like us, that they do not have the same respect for freedom. We don’t tell them how to behave. Simply, we must know that the rights for which our ancestors fought do not exist in these countries.

You cite a single book as a source, William Pitt the Youngerby William Hague.

This is an excellent book, even if Hague has a conservative point of view. I told him about Pitt’s attempts to strip people of the few human rights they had. He agrees that it wasn’t a good thing.

Weapons of Light

Ken Follett

Robert Laffont

792 pages

8/10