Barbara Follett (politician)

Transcription

>> From the Library of Congress in Washington DC. >> I'm Patrick Anderson. I review fiction for the Washington Post and all of us at the Post are very-- thank you, thank you. [ Laughter ] [ Applause ] >> I trust that's for the Post and not for me. All of us at the Post are very, very proud to be associated with this wonderful event and we're very grateful to all of you for making it such a success for 10 years now. It's now my pleasure to introduce a master story teller who for 30 years has been one of the world's bestselling authors, Ken Follett. Mr. Follett has had an extraordinary life and I can only touch on a few highlights briefly. He was born in Cardiff, Wales and a son of a tax inspector. He was educated at state schools and University College London. In his 20s, he first worked as a newspaper reporter and then as an editor for a publishing house. He was also writing in his spare of time and in 1979, his novel Eye of the Needle became a worldwide success but please note this. Eye of the Needle wasn't Mr. Follett's first book. It was his 11th book and he was still in his 20s. This is a very determined man. [Laughter] That initial success has been followed by 30 years by-- for 30 years by a whirlwind of international bestsellers, movies, mini series, prizes, and acclaim. A partial list of his novels would include the Key to Rebecca, The Man from St. Petersburg, Lie Down with Lions, On the Wings of Eagles, The Pillars of the Earth, and its sequel World Without End. Moreover, Mr. Follett has a life away from his computer. He plays guitar in a group called Damn Right I Got the Blues. [ Laughter ] >> Chicago Blues are their specialty. And he and his wife who was a member of parliament have been-- long been active in England's Labour Party as well as in civic, educational, and charitable activities. His new novel, Fall of Giants, is the first volume of a trilogy that will carry five families through many of the great events of the 20th Century. It will be officially published next Tuesday although I suspect a number of you already have copies and in 14 countries it will be officially published next Tuesday. And we're very fortunate to have him here today to discuss it. Let's welcome Ken Follett. [ Applause ] >> Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. It's a great pleasure to be here. In fact, I can't think of anywhere better to be-- I think I'd be worried if I wasn't here. I mean where else should an author be [laughter], you know, on a day like this. All these people, it's a wonderful occasion and I'm very happy to be here. I'm gonna talk a bit about Fall of Giants. My last book World Without End kind of spoiled me in two ways. I didn't-- it was like running a marathon. It's very long-- it's the longest book I've ever written about 420,000 words and I didn't wanna go back to writing thrillers which seemed like going from the marathon to the sprint. And also, you responded so warmly to World Without End. People all over the world liked it so much that I wanted to do something like that again, but I didn't want to write another medieval story. The Pillars of the Earth and World Without End both set in the Middle Ages and I'm thrilled that readers liked them so much, but I also don't wanna be the guy that writes medieval books partly because I've always kind of chalked and changed a bit in my career and it-- that's good for me because it keeps me infested, and I think it's good for readers because if, you know, if the material fascinates me and excites me, then I think that helps me to make it fascinating and exciting for you. So I wanted to change, so what could I do that would have the kind of sweep of World Without End? World Without End is about the Black Death. The Pillars of the Earth is about building a cathedral. What could I write that would have that kind of scope? And I thought about the 20th Century because it's the most dramatic and violent century in the history of human race and it's also our history. I lived through half of it. All of my readers will have lived through some of the 20th Century and our parents and grandparents lived through the rest of it so it's where we came from. As well as being very dramatic in its own right. I also think that it's the kind of book that isn't written much anymore, a sort of long meaty tale that describes an entire society. And I thought of-- there are some other books that do that whose subject is an entire society, one that sprang to mind funny enough was Peyton Place. Do you remember Peyton Place? [ Laughter ] >> It was-- it was notorious really because it was so sexy, but it kind of described that whole town and then by a huge contrast, Middlemarch by George Eliot which also describes a whole town although she leaves out all the bit that-- bits that Grace Matellios [phonetic] has put in about the kind of sleazy underside of life. I think the charm of books like that is that they describe a whole society. The Last Days of Pompeii, a classic book by Bulwer-Lytton, same sort of thing, it describes the whole society. So I've got a feeling that one of the things that readers like is that sense of painting on a big canvas. Now, I said the 20th Century is very dramatic and bloody. It's also too long for one book so I've decided to write a trilogy and divide it into 3 by 3 wars, the First World War, The Second World War, and the Cold War. And I looked around for a novel that I could read that would show me how another author had dealt with writing something like this from an international point of view. And I discovered that nobody's done that. There are books like this. The book I read with most interest was the Winds of War by Herman Wouk which I imagined many people in the room have read. He wrote two books. He also wrote War in Remembrance. But that tells the story of World War 2 really from a very American point of view and I wanted to write from an international point of view. So I-- so how was I gonna-- I developed-- I decided they would need to be five families to tell a story of the 20th Century from an international point of view. So we have an American family, of course, a young man, a young American man who's a very minor aid in the White House working with Woodrow Wilson. We have a Russian family, two brothers one-- two brothers who wanna go to America. One goes to America and the other stays behind that becomes a revolutionist. Actually, that part of the story is based on a true story that a friend of mine told me years ago about how his mother and her two brothers had been saving up to leave Russia in 1914. They got enough money for one ticket. They sent their sister, the youngest, and the other two brothers never made it. They were recruited into the army. They fought in the First World War. They became revolutionaries. They became commissaries in the Soviet Union and they led terrific career in the Soviet Union and never went to America. And my friend's mother, at the age of 90, saw an ad in Los Angeles Times saying, from a private detective, "I will put you in touch with your long lost relatives in Russia. Send me 100 dollars." And she did and my friend said this maybe-- you're never gonna see your 100 dollars and you're never gonna see that detective, but he was wrong. She got in touch with her brothers. So the Peshkov family is kind of based on a true story. And just to finish that story, when my friend's mother finally went back to Russia and met up with her brothers, you'll never guess what they said to her. They were retired by then and they said, we're still powerful and we think we can get you over here. [ Laughter ] >> They really felt quite guilty. She'd been the unlucky one. She'd spent her life living in California driving a Cadillac wearing a mint coat [laughter] and she missed out on everything. Anyway, that was the-- that was the inspiration for the Peshkovs and we have a German family, a young spy, a young German diplomat who's also a spy, an English family of Aristocrats, and the family of Welsh coal miners. Now, some of you know that I'm Welsh and so the-- and my grandfather was a coal miner. So the-- that part came natural-- naturally to me writing the family of Welsh coal miners. And so we see the seismic events of world history through the eyes of these people. Some of them, very ordinary people from very poor families, some of them very powerful people, very upper class people, very wealthy people, and we see them all. And the other thing I wanted to do, I could've written kind of five parallel novels about these five families as they passed through these events, but I thought it would be more interesting and more fun for me to write and for you to read if they all met and inter-linked, and they-- some of them fell in love and some of them came to hate one another, and so on. >> So the five families all interlink as they go through these-- these great events. Now, I will-- I'm gonna read you a short scene which I'm kind of pleased with. I hope you like this scene as much as I do. And it's set-- it's set towards the end of the book. Fitz is the Earl-- Fitz Herbert. He's called Fitz and he was in-- he was supposed to be the villain of this story, actually, but I got to kind of liked him in the end. So he's not that villain. He does some bad things, but he's not that villainous. So this is one of his scenes and I'll read you this and then I'd be very happy when I've read this to answer questions 'cause that's always the most fun part of a-- an occasion like this. And there are two microphones here. So if you wanna ask questions, all you have to do is come up to the microphone. Fitz was outraged. That summer of 1920. When a Russian trade delegation came to London and was welcomed by the Prime Minister David Lloyd George at #10 Downing Street. The Bolsheviks was still at war with the newly reconstituted country of Poland and Fitz thought Britain should be siding with the Poles, but he found little support. London dockers went on strike rather than load ships with rifles for the Polish Army and that Trades Union Congress threatened a general strike if the British Army intervened. However, he could not keep quiet when he learned what the Russians Kamanev and Krasin were up to as they went around Britain. Room 40 still existed or be it in a different form and British intelligence was intercepting and deciphering the telegrams the Russians were sending home. Lev Kamenev, the Chairman of the Moscow's Soviet was shamelessly putting out revolutionary propaganda. Fitz was so incensed that he berated Lloyd George early in August at one of the last dinner parties of the London season. It was at Lord Silverman's house in Belgrade Square. The dinner was not as lavish as Lord Silverman had thrown before the war. There were fewer courses with less food sent untasted back to the kitchen, and the table decoration was simpler. The food was served by maids instead of footmen. No one wanted to be a footman these days. Fitz guessed those extravagant Edwardian parties were gone for good. However, Silverman was still able to attract the most powerful men in the land to his house. Lloyd George asked Fitz about his sister Maude. That was another topic that enraged Fitz. "I'm sorry to say that she's married a German and gone to live in Berlin," he said. "I heard that" said Lloyd George. "I just wondered how she was getting on, delightful young woman." The Prime Minister's liking for delightful young women was well known, not to say notorious. On another subject, Prime Minister said Fitz, "This fellow Kamenev is a Jew Bolshevik. You ought to deport him." The Prime Minister was in mellow mood with a glass of champagne in his hand. "My dear Fitz," he said amiably, "The government is not very worried about Russian misinformation which is crude and violent. Please don't underestimate the British working class. They know clock trap when they hear it. Believe me Kaminev's speeches are doing more to discredit Bolshevism than anything you or I could say." Fitz thought this was complacent rubbish. He had even given money to the Daily Herald. It is this discourteous, I agree, for a foreign government to subsidize one of our own newspapers. But really, are we frightened of the Daily Herald? It's not as if we Liberals and Conservatives didn't have papers of our own, but he's contacting the most hardline revolutionary groups in this country, maniacs dedicated to the overthrow of our entire way of life. The more the British get to know about Bolshevism, the less they will like it. You mark my words. It's formidable only when seen it at distance through impenetrable mists. Bolshevism is almost a safeguard to British society, but it infects all classes with a horror of what may happen if the present organization of society is overturned. I just don't like it. Besides, Lloyd George went on. "If we throw them out, we may have to explain how we know what they're up to? And the news that was spying on them may inflame working class opinion against us more effectively than all of their turgid speeches." Fitz did not want to continue to be lectured on political realities even by the Prime Minister and he persisted with his argument because he felt so angry. "But surely, we don't have to trade with the Bolsheviks. If we refuse to do business with all those who use their embassies here for propaganda, we wouldn't have many trading partners left. Come, come, Fitz. We trade with cannibals in the Solomon Islands." Fitz was not sure that was true. The cannibals of the Solomon Islands did not have much to offer after all, but he let it pass. "Are we so badly off that we have to sell to these murderers?" "I fear we are. I've talked to good many businessmen and they have rather frightened me about the next 18 months. There are no orders coming in. Customers won't buy. We may be in for the worst period of unemployment that any of us have ever known, but the Russians want to buy and they pay in gold." "I would not take their gold." "Ah, but Fitz," said Lloyd George. "You have so much of your own." [Laughter] Thank you. [ Applause ] >> Thank you. I'll say one more thing about that 'cause people often ask me about the dividing line between fiction and real history in stories like this. And in that little scene, obviously, there's a fictional character, Fitz, having a conversation with a real historical person David Lloyd George and the way I handled that was that everything that Lloyd George said in that conversation was something that he did actually say in other circumstances on that topic. He wrote, in fact, the long memo about the visit to England of Kamenev and Krasin, and he said all of those things about Bolshevism being best seen through impenetrable mists. He said all of those things in the memo. So his side of the conversation is all accurate stuff that he would have said in that conversation and did actually say in a memo. Gentleman here has a question. >> Yes. In the recently produced television series based on Pillars of the Earth, there are quite a few changes in the TV version than as compared to the book, not the least of which was completely ignoring the King Henry II-Becket controversy which did not provide for the last-- dramatic last line in your book where Philip was handed the cane to take part of Henry's punishment. My question is which of the changes do you most regret them having made [laughter] and how many fist fights did you get into [laughter] with the screenwriters? And have you learned something that's gonna be different from when they put on the World Without End? >> Well, you know, they tell a story in pictures and I tell a story in words, and so I know from the outset that when they make a miniseries, they're gonna change it. They have to change it. There was-- in the miniseries-- in the book it was clear, for example. It was clear why Regan had such a hold over her son William Hamley. Now, I don't think that was difficult to understand in the book, but on TV they felt that they needed a shorthand way of making her hold clear. So they invented an incestuous relationship between the two which wasn't in the book and I didn't particularly like that. If there was anything, I mildly regretted that because it didn't seem quite right to me, but I understood why they had to do it. And the ending I also understood even at eight hours, there was-- the miniseries of Pillars was eight hours, even at that length it's very much reduced from the book there's an awful lot in the book that isn't in the miniseries, and I could see why it made much more sense to end it in King's Bridge. If they went into the whole Becket-Henry II's story, it would take, you know, they would have need another hour and it would have taken the story-- it takes the story sort of into a new area and I could see that in trying to economize, they chose to leave that out. And I thought the ending that they had actually worked quite well. I didn't-- if you read the book, you might have missed the Becket story, but if you didn't read the book, I think you would think that was quite a satisfactory ending. So I'm not upset about it at all. In fact, I was really pleased with the miniseries, good script, great actors, well directed, and most of the people that I've talked to here who watched it in July and August when it was on Stars here have really enjoyed so I'm pleased. What's your question ma'am? >> Well, I just want a say on that. I have to say I didn't know you as an author before. I actually saw the miniseries which I loved and found fascinating. >> Good. >> And I actually loved it and now I wanna read your books. >> Good. >> So I'm the reverse of that. >> Okay good. >> But my question to you is when you write what's your process? Do you get up in the morning-- I mean, and start writing in the morning? Do you write at night? Do you write over a year? Well we call it garage here. I'm not sure what you call it there. But-- >> Okay. >> What's your process? >> Well, I'm a morning person. I like to start early and I don't like to work in the evening. So I usually-- I usually wake up with the next bit of the story very much on my mind. And really, all I want to do is get on with writing the next scene that I-- so I don't even get dressed. I put on a bathrobe and I make tea because as, you know, Brits can't do anything without tea. [ Laughter ] >> You got that-- he's got it right. >> I take my mug of tea to my desk and I often-- I'm usually writing by about 7 o'clock in the morning and then with the usual breaks for things like shaving and walking the dog. I usually work through 'til about 5 o'clock in the afternoon, then I do business for an hour. I do e-mails and phone calls. And then at 6 o'clock I quite like to have a glass of champagne [laughter]. >> Perfect [laughter]. >> Or two. [ Laughter ] >> And that's my working method. Sebastian Faulks wrote the James Bond. You know, the latest James Bond book was written by Sebastian Faulks and he looked up-- in Fleming's working method which was to write for a couple of hours in the morning, go scuba diving, have a cocktail, have lunch, take a nap, go scuba diving again, write a little more, have some more cocktails, and then have dinner and Sebastian Faulks said, "I followed that routine exactly except for the cocktails and the scuba diving." [ Laughter ] >> That's-- >> Thank you. >> What's your question sir? >> Yes [inaudible]. Thank you, I've enjoyed your books ever since-- >> Thank you. >> A Place Called Freedom. And I wanna know, what's the best advice you've ever received as a writer? >> Let me see. My agent once read one of my early books and said-- none of these people has a past. And I thought about that for a long time and that was a very good criticism. One of the faults with my early books that weren't successful was that people had no life outside the story and I realized that people have to have a life outside the story to seem real to the reader. Obviously, you're focused in the danger there-- they're in at the moment or whatever their fears and hopes are at the moment, but you sort of need to say, you know, about a character and what their mom and dad were like and what kind of childhood they had and when was, you know, what was it like the first time they had sex and all that, you know, all these really important things about our lives. You need to think about them and you need to know and you need to say something about that for the character to seem real, so that was good advice. >> Thank you. >> Yes sir. >> Hi. In Eye of the Needle, what did Die Nedal mean by-- at the end of his messages he wrote regards to Willy. What did that mean? >> Oh, it was a kind of cheeky joke by him. I said this is long time ago by the way [laughter]. I wrote that book 33 years ago. But the head of German intelligence, the head of the Abwehr, was called Wilhelm Canaris and so regards to Willy was regard to Wilhelm Canaris, the head of the naval intelligence. Of course, the Kaiser's name was also Wilhelm so it might have been a little bit of subversive-- a little undermining of the Kaiser. But anyway, it was meant to show that he was very independent and he didn't [inaudible] to anybody. Ma'am, what's your question? >> I love Pillars of the Earth and I was just wondering with all the research you did on building a cathedral and also writing the sequel has shift you on religion change? >> Well, no, not really. That was one of those things that I made my mind up about as a teenager, you know, when I was about 17 or 18. But the interesting thing about writing the Pillars of the Earth was it-- although I'm not religious, and I'm-- partly because of my very religious upbringing. I'm kind of hostile to all that kind of thing. In writing the Pillars of the Earth, it was about the building-- building a church so, clearly, there had to be in that story some sympathetic characters whose view of religion was different from mine. And so Prior Philip was really one of the most difficult characters for me to write ever. And for one thing, he's cheerfully celibate. I've never written a character [laughter] who was celibate and happy about it before. And clearly, he had to be-- Prior Philip had to be a very sincere Christian and so I modeled him on the kind of Christians that-- that I admire. In our political life, Barbara, my wife and I have-- we often worked with clergymen and their agenda is the same as ours. They're concerned or some of them are concerned about material and spiritual poverty in their congregation and that's basically the agenda of the Labour Party that Barbara and I belong to, so. We worked with clergymen and I modeled Philip on the kind of clergymen that I really admire. Philip, you'll notice, never says to anybody you're suffering now, but it'll be alright in the afterlife in heaven. He always tries to solve their problems here and now. He's a very practical Christian in that respect and the kind that I've often come across and admire, and I'll finish answering the question by telling you about a monk who came up to me at a book fair in Switzerland in Basel, German language, book fair in Basel. But this guy spoke very good English and he came up to me and said, "I love the Pillars of the Earth and all my brothers in the monastery also loved the book." And I said, "I'm very pleased to hear that." Although a little surprised because I feel that it's not really a very spiritual book. It's about the material problems of building a cathedral and Prior Philip is a very practical Christian and not really a very-- he's not interested in theology. He's in a way not very spiritual and this monk said, "Yes, that's why we like him so much." [ Laughter ] >> So I guess I pleased them. Sir, what's your question? >> Vince [inaudible] good to see you in person here. >> Thank you. >> I just wanna say The Man from St. Petersburg is my favorite book that you wrote and it was probably one of your earlier ones. >> Yes. >> And it was just such a fantastic book. I rated it in my top five. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. That was my fourth book written in about-- I guess in about 1981, 1982, and I'm very glad. I'm very pleased that people are still reading it. What's your question ma'am? >> Hi. So you're raising a trilogy of about five families that's for this very century. >> Yeah. >> I was wondering, how do you manage to keep all the different pieces of the story and the details in your mind while you're writing? >> With great difficulty. [Laughter] It's-- so first of all I'm writing it one book at a time. I have a general outline of the whole three, but that's-- it's pretty vague and I've realized that if I wrote a detailed outline for the whole trilogy it might take me years and I kind of-- I didn't want to spend that long without writing something that you guys could read, you know, 'cause an outline is only for me to read. So I wrote the Fall of Giants. I finished it, and then I started on the outline for book 2 and I've written about a hundred pages of book 2 now. The other thing I do, I've done recently, and I found it very helpful, I never used to do this, but I make a spreadsheet in Excel on my computer and every time I introduce a new named character, I put the character on the spreadsheet with his age or her age, and any description I paste into the spreadsheet and that really helps me keep track. I never used to do this and it might be because I'm writing longer books now or it might be because I'm getting older and I don't remember things quite as well as I used to. But anyway, I found that very helpful. And of course, the outline that I write before I start to write chapter 1 says what happens in every chapter, and says who the characters are. So that also helps me keep hold on it. And finally, the other thing I do which I find helpful in a funny way is, early in the story, I cut out pictures from magazines and art books, and so on, of people who look like the characters that I've got in my mind and I stick all these pictures up on a big board. So when I'm writing, I can look at the board and I can see the faces of the characters more or less as I imagine them and I find that that really helps to make them vivid to me. So one way or another, I just about managed to keep track. So what's your question? We better-- we do these two questions and then I have to go, but-- >> It's actually a very similar question. I was just gonna ask if you have any advice for aspiring writers of how to balance many, many, many story lines, just kind of juggling them all at once. >> Well, that is quite difficult and it's important to-- not to make the scenes too short, not to jump from one to the other too quickly but also if you leave one of the story lines untouched for 100 pages then we've got to remember the readers probably forgotten about it. So, I mean my touch stone in all these questions-- my touch stone is that the reader must be emotionally engaged. And that's all you need to do, you know, if the reader cares, if the reader is happy or sad, or anxious or angry, indignant, anything, then he or she will turn the page and read what happens next. >> You have to-- whatever you do, you have to have that emotional engagement and if you don't have it, then no matter how good the book, no matter how well written the book is, how intelligent, how clever, if the reader isn't emotionally engaged, then it's gonna be quite hard to read. So in answering that question, I don't have very good specific advice about balancing storylines, but my underlying advice would be the only thing that matters is are you making people care about what's happening to these people or not. And if you're not, then you're doing something wrong and if you are, then it's probably gonna be a bestseller. >> Thank you. >> Last question Madam. >> It's interesting to hear that you formed a visual image of the person 'cause we do that too as readers and it would be interesting that-- >> Yeah. >> But my question is about research, when you're researching historical events, I mean that's easy, but how do you research perspective? How do you research the American perspective to World War I as opposed to the Russian? >> Well, on that question, it's very useful-- I start with general history books, but what I find so valuable are things like diaries that people wrote at the time or memoirs of ordinary people, or letters home, there are quite a lot of collections of letters home from men who were fighting in the trenches, home to their wives and girlfriends, and mothers and fathers, and that tells you the real everyday. That gives you the everyday feel of it, I mean, talk about perspective, you know. That's the man who is actually sitting in that muddy trench with a pencil and a piece of paper writing home to his mother. That will give you the real feel of what it must have been like or a diary that he wrote everyday sitting in his dugout. That's the kind of material that's most valuable to me. Thanks everybody for coming. [ Applause ] >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.