The Welsh writer Ken Follett has offered the full copyright of his story "Notre-Dame" published after the fire in the Parisian cathedral in April 2019 to restore another, a flagship of Gothic architecture in Brittany .
Ken Follett, whose book had sold more than 113.000 copies worldwide, pays all of his copyright to the Heritage Foundation (FdP), the latter announced on Monday.
"Together, they choose to allocate this donation to the restoration and security work of another cathedral, that of Dol-de-Bretagne," the statement continued.
The Foundation "will soon donate a sum of EUR 148.000 to the municipality", he adds.
Ken Follett is best known for "The Pillars of the Earth" (1989), which chronicles the construction of a Gothic cathedral in Kingsbride, a fictional town in XNUMXth century England. For this work, he was inspired by Notre-Dame de Paris, and one of the scenes from "A Column of Fire", the third part of the trilogy, takes place in the Parisian cathedral.
In "Notre-Dame", he looks back on the emotion that overwhelmed him at the sight of the burning cathedral as well as on its history.
The Saint-Samson cathedral in Dol-de-Bretagne is very degraded. Work, for an amount of 2,4 million euros, was started in 2019 and should be completed in 2024.
The cover is no longer waterproof, the granite balustrades are damaged, some facings need to be replaced or consolidated, four XNUMXth century stained-glass windows, the oldest stained-glass windows listed in Brittany, are no longer protected.
