The Pillars of the Earth

Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth is set in twelfth-century England, in the fictional town of Kingsbridge, which has a priory, a market and no cathedral. The novel begins with the sinking of the White Ship, which leaves Henry I without a clear heir, and runs through the civil war that follows, in which Henry's nephew Stephen of Blois and his daughter Maud each claim the crown, while ambitious nobles and churchmen take sides. It ends around the murder of Thomas Becket, spanning several decades in which the town's fortunes and the priory's standing rise and fall.

At the centre of the book is the building of the cathedral, and the people whose lives change because of it: the prior who wants it raised, the mason who knows how to design it, and a woman who works in wool and whose fortunes are tied to the town. The book is arranged as a prologue followed by six sections, and along the way it traces how Gothic building grew out of the Romanesque work that came before it. Before writing it, Follett was known as a writer of thrillers.

The Pillars of the Earth was published in 1989 as the first of the Kingsbridge books, and it was made into an eight-part television miniseries in 2010.