Segovia is a pretty sand-coloured medieval town on a hill. Its tangled streets have more churches and monasteries than I can count. My hotel is a former monastery, with walls a metre thick, though it is a lot more comfortable now than it would have been in the Middle Ages.
My first day begins with a photocall and press conference. The journalists ask me about Brexit, Trump and nationalism, and I tell them I’m against all three.
The town seems to go to sleep after lunch. Spanish people fiercely deny taking the siesta—that’s old-fashioned, they say. But most of the shops are shut and the only people on the streets seem to be groups of German and Japanese tourists with their guides.
There’s a lot for us visitors to look at, starting with a magnificent 16th century cathedral. But the most astonishing sight is the Roman aqueduct, built in the first century C.E., made of massive grey stones with no mortar and still, amazingly, standing.
My appearance is on Saturday evening. I show a short film about the places I went to research A Column of Fire, then I talk for 20 minutes. The festival theme of coexistence is highly relevant to my novel about the wars of religion in the 16th century. I say that people were scared of Protestantism then the way they are scared of immigration now, and they wasted a lot of lives and money trying to hold back the tide of change.
Then I invite questions. This is the part of the evening the audience likes best, and it’s fun for me because I don’t know what’s going to come up. Tonight my favourite question is which book was the hardest to finish, and I remember not knowing how to end The Pillars of the Earth until I thought of using the most famous murder of the Middle Ages, the killing of Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral.
When we leave the hall, it is dark and the town has come to life. The citizens stroll around en famille, grandparents with walking sticks and babies in strollers. We've been told that the best restaurant in town is Meson de Candido. The proprietor-chef, Candido, brings out a slow-cooked suckling pig and divides it into four, not with a knife but with the edge of a plate which he then smashes on the floor.
We eat the deliciously tender pork with a bottle of Trasnocho 2010. It’s a hard life, but someone’s got to do it.
Ken Follett, born in Cardiff, Wales, is one of the world's best-selling novelists. He appeared at Hay Festival Segovia 2018 to talk about his latest book, A Column of Fire – the third novel in his Kingsbridge Series – which went straight to the No.1 position on bestseller lists in the USA, Spain, Italy, Germany and France. His 30 novels have sold over 160 million copies to date, published in 30 languages.