1. Ken Follett

Canton Library, Cardiff

For the first ever episode of Ex Libris, Ben Holden met up with one of the most formidable storytellers of our age.

More than 160 million copies of Ken Follett’s books have been sold to date worldwide.

Ben spoke with Ken and Rhian Jones, Senior Librarian, in Ken’s childhood library in Canton, Cardiff. This glorious Carnegie library was a hugely formative place for Ken as a kid: ‘I didn’t have many books of my own and I’ve always been grateful for the public library. Without free books I would not have become a voracious reader, and if you are not a reader you are not a writer.’

Ken was twenty-seven when he wrote Eye of the Needle, an award-winning thriller that became an international bestseller.

He then surprised everyone with The Pillars of the Earth, about the building of a cathedral in the Middle Ages. The novel continues to captivate readers all over the world. Its sequels World Without End and A Column of Fire were both number one bestsellers in the US, UK and Europe. His many other novels include the bestselling Century trilogy, which comprises Fall of Giants, Winter of the World and Edge of Eternity.

His newest book is a tribute to Paris’ Notre-Dame. Entitled A Short History of the Meaning of Cathedrals, it is published on 29 October, 2019 and prompted a very cool, fascinating exploration in Cardiff of the parallels between cathedrals and libraries: those sacred spaces that best express our shared humanity.