Ken Follett: ‘You don’t have to wear a hairshirt to be in the Labour party’

‘I have a bookcase with one copy of every edition or translation of my books. I look at it and think: “That’s how I’ve spent my life.”’ Ken Follett. Photograph: Gareth Iwan Jones/BBC Maestro

I was launched into the literary world by a garage bill. I was working on the Evening News and needed £200 to fix my old Vauxhall Ventura, which I couldn’t afford. Another reporter had written a thriller and said the publisher paid him £200. That little coincidence made me think I could try it, too.

I wasn’t allowed to watch TV or films by my Plymouth Brethren parents. I don’t think it did me any harm, but at the time I was furious about being denied. All my friends went to Saturday morning pictures and were talking about these superheroes and cowboys they’d seen. Whereas I read so much, I was considered a bit odd. More than once, I was asked in a worried tone, “You do go out to play sometimes, don’t you?”