The Pillars of the Earth

Chapter IAbout the book

First published

1989

Main genre

Historical fiction

Length

806 pages

A stonemason who dreams of building a cathedral and a prior who wants one meet in a country tearing itself apart. The Pillars of the Earth is set in the twelfth century, in the fictional town of Kingsbridge, in the years between the sinking of the White Ship and the murder of Thomas Becket. After the ship goes down and Henry I dies without a clear heir, his daughter Maud and his nephew Stephen of Blois fight for the throne, and the country slides into the civil war later called the Anarchy. Tom Builder, a mason, and his family are left destitute and starving, and when his wife dies in childbirth he leaves the newborn in the snowy woods. Philip, the leader of a small monastery cell, learns of a plot against King Stephen and goes to Kingsbridge Priory, where the previous prior has died and Waleran Bigod promises to support his election. Philip is a devout and resourceful monk who wants a great cathedral, Tom is the mason who becomes his architect, and Lady Aliena is a noblewoman whose fortunes are tied to theirs. The book is a story of ambition, anarchy and absolute power, told through the slow work of raising a building across decades.

Chapter IIThe author and the making

Ken Follett was born on 5 June 1949 in Cardiff, Wales. After a three-month postgraduate journalism course he became a trainee reporter at the South Wales Echo, and he later returned to London as a general-assignment reporter for the Evening News. His thriller Eye of the Needle, published in 1978, became an international bestseller and sold over 10 million copies, and by the time of Pillars he was, in his own words, known as a thriller writer. The cathedral idea came from his upbringing in a Plymouth Brethren family, whose worship space was very sparse, and from reading about medieval architecture. He has said he does not believe in God and is not what you would call a spiritual person, but he became fascinated by cathedrals. He knew it had to be a long book, because building a cathedral took at least thirty years. He started it, dropped it, and did not look at it again for ten years. His publishers were a little nervous about such a very unlikely subject, and Follett called the book the beginning of a move towards more serious fiction. Macmillan published the first edition in the UK in 1989, in 806 pages. He has said that a lot of people were surprised by it, including himself.

Chapter IIIHow it was received

The Pillars of the Earth was highly successful: it was on The New York Times bestseller list for eighteen weeks, topped bestseller lists in Canada, Britain and Italy, and had sold 26 million copies as of 2017. It is Follett's best-selling work, and his own preface calls it his most popular book. It was ranked 33rd in the BBC's Big Read in 2003, the survey that sought the nation's best-loved book, and in 2007 it was chosen for Oprah's Book Club in the United States. An eight-part miniseries premiered on 23 July 2010 on Starz in the US and in Canada, and on Channel 4 in the UK that October. The book has also grown into a series: three sequels and a prequel, each set in Kingsbridge in a different century, appeared between 2007 and 2023. The earliest resistance came from his own publishers, who were a little nervous about such a very unlikely subject; a book about a cathedral was not an obvious bet. The reception that followed surprised many people, including its author.

Chapter IVWhy it matters

The Pillars of the Earth matters as the book that turned a thriller writer into an historical novelist and showed that readers would follow a building project across decades if the people were strong enough. It is credited with launching the Kingsbridge series, and it has stayed in print and in readers' hands since 1989. It also gave a wide audience a way into the Anarchy and the medieval church, through the problems of a mason, a monk and a lady, rather than through kings alone. Be ready for its scale. At 806 pages it is long, it follows a building across decades, and Follett himself said it had to be a long book. The cathedral-building detail, the slow rhythm of the work and a large cast will suit readers who like to learn how things are made, and they may tire readers who want a short, plot-driven thriller. It is a good fit for those who enjoy historical sagas with a clear moral shape, and a poor fit for those who want literary experiment. It is the first published of the Kingsbridge books, but the prequel The Evening and the Morning comes first in the town's chronology, so either can be read first.

Chapter VIf you liked this

• World Without End Ken FollettThe first Kingsbridge sequel, set two centuries later with the same town and a new cathedral crisis
• Wolf Hall Hilary MantelA historical novel about power and court politics, with a sharper literary edge
• Shogun James ClavellA long, absorbing historical epic about a stranger in a powerful, foreign court
• The Name of the Rose Umberto EcoA medieval novel set in a monastery, with architecture and church politics at its core