The book received a boost in sales when Oprah Winfrey selected it for her influential television book club three years ago. 'My publishers were a little nervous about such a very unlikely subject but, paradoxically, it is my most popular book.

Until that point he was best known for his thrillers such as the 1978 novel The Eye of the Needle. 'So the story covers the entire lives of the main characters.'įollett, who was raised within the puritan Plymouth Brethren sect, became fascinated in the 1980s with early English architecture. 'It took at least 30 years to build a cathedral and most took longer because they would run out of money or be attacked or invaded,' said Follett. Set in the fictional town of Kingsbridge, Follett's saga charts the lives of key characters during the long cathedral-building project and reflects the conflict between the two presiding powers of the era: the landed aristocrats and the church. The German production company Tandem Communications is now lined up to make a television version of the bestselling Robert Harris novel Pompeii. The series has sold across Europe and the saga's 2007 sequel, World Without End, is already in production, a sign of the growing international market in expensive costume drama epics since the popularity of Rome, the HBO/BBC mini-series first screened in 2005. Follett's story revolves around the fortunes of a stonemason, played by Sewell, and the slow progress of the first cathedral to be built in England in the Gothic style.

The pillars of the earth by ken follett