Ken Follett signed books

was born on 5 June 1949 in Cardiff, Wales, the son of a tax inspector. He was educated at state schools and graduated from University College, London, with an Honours degree in philosophy. He was made a Fellow of the college in 1995. He became a reporter, first with his home-town newspaper the South Wales Echo and later with the London Evening News. While working on the Evening News he wrote his first novel, which was published but did not become a bestseller. He then went to work for a small London publishing house, Everest Books, eventually becoming Deputy Managing Director. He continued to write novels in his spare time.

Follett burst into the book world in 1978 with Eye of the Needle, a taut and original thriller with a memorable woman character in the central role. The book won the Edgar award and became an outstanding film starring Kate Nelligan and Donald Sutherland. He went on to write four more bestselling thrillers: Triple; The Key to Rebecca; The Man from St. Petersburg; and Lie Down with Lions.

Follett also wrote On Wings of Eagles, the true story of how two employees of Ross Perot were rescued from Iran during the revolution of 1979. He then surprised readers by radically changing course with The Pillars of the Earth, a novel about building a cathedral in the Middle Ages.

For a while he abandoned the straightforward spy genre, but his stories still had powerful narrative drive, strong women characters, and elements of suspense and intrigue. He followed Pillars with Night over Water, A Dangerous Fortune, and A Place Called Freedom. Then he returned to the thriller genre.

The Third Twin is a scorching suspense novel about a young woman scientist who stumbles over a secret experiment in genetic engineering. The Hammer of Eden, another nail-biting contemporary suspense story, came in 1998. Code to Zero (2000), about brainwashing and rocket science in the fifties, went to No.1 on bestseller lists in the USA, German and Italy. Ken returned to the WWII era with his next two novels: Jackdaws (2001), a World War II thriller about a group of women parachuted into France to destroy a vital telephone exchange - which won the won the Corine Prize for 2003 - and Hornet Flight (2002), about a daring young Danish couple who escape to Britain from occupied Denmark in a rebuilt Hornet Moth biplane with vital information about German radar. His next novel, Whiteout (2004), is a contemporary thriller about the theft of a deadly virus from a research lab. World Without End (2007) was the long-awaited sequel to The Pillars of the Earth.

His next project is his most ambitious yet. The Century Trilogy will tell the entire history of the twentieth century, seen through the eyes of five linked families: one American, one English, one German, one Russian, and one Welsh. The first book, Fall of Giants, focusing on the First World War and the Russian Revolution, will be published worldwide simultaneously on 28 September 2010. He is already at work on the second, provisionally titled The Winter of the World, about the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War, and the development of nuclear weapons.