The Washington Post-Ken Folletts new novel proves hes a master of the historical drama

2023-09-05T16:45:11.605Z

Ken Follett’s Kingsbridge novels, a sprawling chronicle of the life and times in a fictional English town, have sold millions. With the arrival of “The Armor of Light,” the fifth volume in the series, the saga now spans more than 800 years and extends to well over 4,000 pages of suspense and high drama presented in plain, down-to-earth prose. The books are peopled by characters of every stripe — villains, victims, avengers, innovators, commercial geniuses, and highborn men and women finding love and ungovernable passion in the lower orders. Aside from being thumping good yarns in the grand old style, each volume opens the door on a pivotal period in English history and is rich in material and technical description, not least about the mysteries of structural engineering.

The first, and still the most famous in the series, “The Pillars of the Earth” (1989), is set in the 12th century during “the Anarchy,” a period of political chaos and violence that accompanied the struggle for succession to the English throne, the poisonous effects of which are felt even in Kingsbridge. “World Without End” (2007) jumps ahead to the 14th century and embroils itself in the turmoil arising out of the 100 Years War and the Black Death. “A Column of Fire” (2017) moves on to the 16th century and the gore-spattered reigns of (Bloody) Mary I and Elizabeth I, on to the reign of James I and the thwarting of the Gunpowder Plot. Follett then stepped back six centuries to the turn of the 10th century in “The Evening and the Morning” (2020), as Anglo-Saxon England is beset by Viking raids and the future Kingsbridge is still the muddy little town of Dreng’s Ferry.

Ken Follett’s latest epic is among the best audiobooks this month

Now, with “The Armor of Light,” we find ourselves in Kingsbridge and its surrounds in 1792, the year that marks the beginning of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. At the same time, steady advances in industrial mechanization are fast laying waste to traditional ways of life. In Kingsbridge, a center of woolen textile production, work is moving from the homes of hand carders, spinners and weavers to mills equipped with vastly more productive machinery. Combined with the inflationary effect of the wars and the government’s crackdown on “sedition” — usefully construed by the propertied classes as associations of working people — survival for workers has become a very grim business.

The story opens in a field belonging to the squire of Badford, a village lying outside of Kingsbridge. Men are digging turnips under the brutal supervision of Will Riddick, the arrogant, wastrel son of the squire. Impatient and reckless as usual, Riddick causes a cart to be overloaded and a man, Harry Clitheroe, is crushed beneath it and dies after hours of agony. If you think young Riddick will accept responsibility and offer proper restitution to the man’s family, you don’t know Ken Follett, a virtuoso of portraying injustice. Instead of reparation, Harry’s wife, Sue, receives a pittance and her 6-year-old son, Kit, is ordered to work in the manor house. It doesn’t take long for the boy to run afoul of Will and he ends up kicked in the head by Will’s skittish horse and nearly dies. In time, Kit’s mother, Sue, a powerfully built woman, appears on the scene and floors the detestable Will with a right haymaker. As punishment, she is banished from the village, moves to Kingsbridge and, happily enough, secures a job working a spinning engine in a new, up-to-date factory owned by one Amos Barrowfield, a rare decent industrialist.

Amos is himself a survivor of the vile machinations of another of Follett’s bad actors, the grasping, merciless Alderman Hornbeam, who had hoped to take over Amos’s late father’s woolen-cloth business by calling in a large loan. And thereby lies another tale culminating in villainy foiled. Be that as it may, Amos is far from content, eating his heart out over the beautiful, but ambitious Jane Midwinter, who has set her sights on bigger prey. Meanwhile, Elsie Latimer, daughter of the bishop and his wife, Arabella, is pining over Amos — while Arabella entertains a forbidden desire for a weaver. In the past, Kingsbridge simply throbs with passion, requited and otherwise.

This is to mention the longings and doings of only a few of the many characters who populate this industrious book. The story plunges on into the 19th century, presenting technical innovation, battle action on the Continent, labor unrest in Kingsbridge met by the newly passed Combination Act outlawing worker organizations or meetings or just about anything that could be so construed. Follett’s sympathies are very much with the workers; nonetheless, he and history give them a rough time, delivering long hours and pay cuts, a hanging, a gruesome flogging, time in the stocks, imprisonment and transportation to Australia.

The story is propelled by acts of highhanded cruelty answered by the resourcefulness and pluck of its victims, a dynamic so predictable that we know that, in most cases, it’s only a matter of time before good triumphs and comeuppance is delivered — whereupon the cycle repeats itself. Yes, we’re being manipulated, but we can’t stop turning the pages: What now? What next? Beyond that, however, it is Follett’s generosity and adeptness with historical detail and nimble depictions of technical matters that set this book, like its predecessors, above mere historical melodrama.

Katherine A. Powers reviews audiobooks every month for The Washington Post.

The Armor of Light

By Ken Follett

Viking. 752 pp. $38