Ken Follet had offered the full copyright of his story “Notre-Dame” published after the fire of the Parisian monument on April 15, 2019, i.e. 148,000 euros, to restore the Saint-Samson cathedral in this city close to the bay of Mont Saint-Michel.
The Welsh writer Ken Follett expressed his pride and his emotion on Sunday by visiting the cathedral of Dol-de-Bretagne (Ille-et-Vilaine), of which he helped to finance the renovation works by donating the royalties of his story “Notre-Dame”.
“I am very proud and very happy to help you a little for the repairs of the cathedral of Dol”, said a moved Ken Follett, received by the elected officials of this city of 6000 inhabitants who made him an honorary citizen.
“We do it for us, because it is beautiful and we love this church, but also for our children and their children,” added the British author in impeccable French. “We are doing this for the future and we hope the cathedral will continue to exist for another 800 years.”
Ken Follet had offered the full copyright of his story “Notre-Dame” published after the fire of the Parisian monument on April 15, 2019, i.e. 148,000 euros, to restore the Saint-Samson cathedral in this city close to the bay of Mont Saint-Michel.
Why Dol? “Because the cathedral is in great need of money and it was founded by Saint-Samson, who was Welsh like me,” he explained.
2.6 million euros of renovation
The renovation work on the cathedral, in particular the roof, will cost a total of 2.6 million euros, of which approximately one million will be borne by the municipality, explained the mayor Denis Rapinel. They should be completed by the end of 2023.
“It’s expensive but it has to be done because these buildings contain our history, the history of Europe”, insisted Ken Follett during a visit to the work on the roofs of the cathedral.
The writer himself nailed a slate engraved with his name on one of the roofs being renovated.
A jewel of Gothic architecture in Brittany, the Saint-Samson cathedral, listed as a historical monument since 1840, is very degraded.
The writer with more than 180 million books sold, including the “Pillars of the Earth” devoted to the construction of an imaginary cathedral in the Middle Ages, attended a mass in the early morning.
He then rode up the main street of the festive city aboard a horse-drawn carriage, waving a Breton flag to the applause and “thank you Mr. Follett” from the crowd, in an atmosphere of binious, bombardments and Breton dances.