Sebastian Faulks

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Sebastian Faulks CBE FRSL (born 20 April 1953) is an acclaimed English novelist.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Faulks is the son of Pamela (Lawless) and Peter Ronald Faulks, a Berkshire solicitor who later became a judge.[1] He grew up in Newbury. His mother was both cultured and highly strung. She introduced him to reading and music at a young age. Her own mother, from whom she was estranged, had been an actress in repertory. His father was a company commander in the Duke of Wellington's Regiment, in which he served from 1939 to 1946. He saw action in Holland, France, Tunisia, Italy (at the Anzio landings), Syria and Palestine. He was wounded three times and awarded an immediate MC after an action against the Hermann Goering Parachute Troops in North Africa in 1942.

His maternal grandfather, Philip Henry Lawless, enlisted in the 1st Battalion, 28th county of London Regiment, otherwise known as The Artists' Rifles in 1914, and served in trench warfare on the Western Front until 1917, when he moved to the 26th Battalion Middlesex Regiment and finished the war in Salonika. He was decorated several times and received the Military Cross in 1918, the standard Victory Medal, the British War Medal and the 1914 Star. He eventually left the Army and returned to work as a wine merchant - his father's original occupation.[1]

His paternal grandfather, Major James Faulks (Major was his name, not a military rank) was an accountant who had previously worked as a schoolmaster at a private boarding school in Tunbridge Wells, while Major's provisions merchant father, William Robert Faulks, supplied dairy products in late Victorian Paddington.[1]

Faulks' father wanted him to become a diplomat [2]. He himself admits his first ambition was to be a taxi driver until at the age of fifteen, whilst reading George Orwell, he decided to become a novelist instead. In fact, he is the only member of his paternal family not to be a lawyer; his father and uncle were judges and his brother Edward is a QC specialising in medical negligence.

Faulks was educated at Wellington College and studied English at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he won an open exhibition and to which he was elected an honorary fellow in 2007. He took a teaching job after university before moving into journalism, becoming a features writer for the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph, and was recruited by the Independent as Literary Editor in 1986. He soon became the Deputy Editor of the Independent on Sunday before leaving in 1991 to concentrate on writing. He has been a columnist for The Guardian (1992-8) and The Evening Standard (1997-9).

He continues to contribute articles and reviews to a number of newspapers and magazines. He wrote and presented the Channel 4 Television series 'Churchill's Secret Army', about the wartime Special Operations Executive, screened in 1999. Faulks appears regularly on British TV and Radio, for example as a captain on BBC Radio 4's literary quiz The Write Stuff.

Faulks lives with his wife, Veronica (formerly his assistant at The Independent), and their three children in Notting Hill, London. He works from his study in a top floor flat of a house near Holland Park Avenue, ten minutes from his home, starting work at 10am and finishing at 6pm, regardless of whether he is writing a book or not.[3]

He was appointed CBE in 2002 and he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Faulks supports West Ham United[4].

[edit] Novels and other works

His first novel, A Trick of the Light, was published in 1984; Faulks was 31 at the time and was finding writing hard-going, as he himself says:

“ I found it extremely difficult to get going as a novelist. When I wrote A Trick of the Light, I'd already written two novels and I thought if I can't get this one published, that's it. I've given it my best shot, but it's over. However, it wasn't until my next book, The Girl at the Lion d'Or, that I began to feel confident. In a way it seemed perverse that I should write a book set in a foreign country in a different period, which had a female main character, but actually it was very liberating for me.'[5] ”

In 1989 he published the first of his ‘French trilogy’, The Girl at the Lion d'Or. This was followed by the second book, Birdsong (1993), which has sold more than 3 million copies worldwide and came 13th in the BBC's Big Read initiative which aimed to identify Britain's best loved novels[6]. Faulks said in an interview,

“ I wrote it very fast - in six months - and felt absolutely fired up while I was doing it. I'd work for about three or four hours in the morning and then I'd go off in the afternoon to do some research at the Imperial War Museum. Sometimes I was only just keeping ahead of myself. But every time I stepped into the void, something just seemed to materialise under my foot.'[7] ”

The trilogy was completed with Charlotte Gray (1998) [made into a movie directed by Gillian Armstrong and starring Cate Blanchett (2002)]. On Green Dolphin Street was published in 2001 and in 2005 Faulks published his most ambitious novel, Human Traces, described by Sir Trevor Nunn in The Independent as 'a masterpiece of this or any other century'.

His most recent novel, as at 2007, is Engleby (2007).

[edit] Non-fiction

One of Sebastian Faulks’ most acclaimed non-fiction works is The Fatal Englishman: Three Short Lives, a multiple biography of artist Christopher Wood, airman Richard Hillary, and spy Jeremy Wolfenden. Pistache, a collection of parodies of famous writers, was published in 2006.

[edit] James Bond and Devil May Care

In July 2007, it was revealed that Faulks had become the latest author to write an official James Bond novel, Devil May Care, at the request of the trustees of the estate of original 007 author Ian Fleming.[8] The novel was released on May 28, 2008, to mark the 100th anniversary of Fleming's birth.

Devil May Care is set during the Cold War. Bond is widowed and vulnerable but remains heroically gallant and libidinous.

Faulks finished the book in six weeks and has followed the Bond style with exotic locations, glamorous women and larger-than-life villains. He says Devil May Care is about 80 per cent Fleming and is set in 1967, the year after Fleming's final Bond book - a collection of short stories called Octopussy and the Living Daylights - was published posthumously. Corinne Turner, the managing director of Ian Fleming Publications which commissioned the book, said the Fleming family "was delighted with it". According to the author, Bond "... has been through a lot of bad things. He is slightly more vulnerable than any previous Bond but at the same time he is both gallant and highly sexed if you like". [9]

[edit] Literary Themes

One of Britain's most popular novelists, Faulks often blends the modern history of England, France, and America with elements of romance. He has a widespread following, particularly among women readers. His strong background in national newspaper journalism shows through in his narrative fluency and his ability to convincingly fictionalise aspects of recent history within his works.[10]

Faulks's novels are mostly about conflict: conflict of the heart and conflict of the battlefield. With its evocation of the hellishness of the great war - soldiers trapped in tunnels and trenches, maimed, maddened and ultimately destroyed by a war with no purpose - Birdsong is often regarded as his best book. But the books are about more than war; for many readers they are primarily love stories.

The human costs of love and war are his essential subjects. An underlying theme in all his novels is the pressure that public events exert on the individuals caught up in them. Faulks was asked in a 2001 interview why he is so fixated on war and he noted,

“ ... he is not, no more than many men of his age and upbringing. "It's just what the 20th century did. I'm just a reporter". As a six-year-old he was taught by a man "who had an arm tucked in here, and a gammy leg, and he'd been ripped apart by bullets". Wherever he looked there were men scarred by war. "And my father was wounded three times, once in the head and twice in the arm" (his father, who died in 1998, was a trainee lawyer when he joined the army as an officer). Faulks says the war made his father relaxed, unambitious - having survived the horror, he was content with family and friends, peace and a nice garden. [11] ”

Faulks often seems to be at war with himself: the radical free spirit with a conservative family life; the hedonist and the ascetic; the artist and businessman. His novels make clear that there is a masculine side to his writing (war, technology) and a feminine side (love, landscape, romance) which co-exist side by side.

Faulks is also a Francophile with a European slant on the question of 'Englishness'. He writes in a descriptive vein about the pleasures of sexual passion, food and drink, landscape, as well as the anguish of separation and the wounding effects of the past.[12] Although he doesn't consider himself a romantic novelist per se, he does state,

“ There is always a love story in there. There is always romantic or sexual love. Both actually. Romantic stroke sexual. Plus a life affected by the public world."[13] ”

As Dr Jules Smith suggests in a critical profile of Faulks: '... He is a conscious, and very skilled, manipulator of his readers' emotions. But such is the enjoyment factor, luscious romantic detailing, and sheer narrative drive of his books that they completely carry one along with them. Taken as a whole, his 'French' trilogy is a considerable achievement, and all his books are highly enjoyable; read them as romances, as historical witness or simply as an Englishman's highly attractive view of the seductions of French and American culture.'[14]


[edit] Bibliography

Fiction

Non-fiction

[edit] Prizes and awards

  • 1995 British Book Awards Author of the Year
  • 1998 James Tait Black Memorial Prize (for fiction) shortlist: Charlotte Gray
  • 2002 CBE

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c The Daily Telegraph, Family detective, 30th June, 2007 [[1]]
  2. ^ The Australian, Books, April 28, 2007 'Parting with the art of war [[2]]
  3. ^ The Telegraph, 6 May, 2007, 'Different Faulks',[[3]]
  4. ^ The Independent, 19 April 2000, 'You ask the question' [4]
  5. ^ The Telegraph, 6 May, 2007, 'Different Faulks', [[5]]
  6. ^ [[6]]
  7. ^ The Telegraph, 6 May, 2007, 'Different Faulks'
  8. ^ "Faulks pens new James Bond novel", BBC News Online, BBC. 
  9. ^ The Daily Telegraph, 11.07.2007 [[7]]
  10. ^ Contemporary writers, critical perspective, Dr Jules Smith, 2002 [[8]]
  11. ^ The Guardian, April 23, 2001, 'In love and war',[[9]]
  12. ^ Contemporary writers, critical perspective [[10]]
  13. ^ The Guardian, April 23, 2001, 'In love and war',[[11]]
  14. ^ Contemporary writers, critical perspective, Dr Jules Smith, 2002 [[12]]

[edit] External links

Preceded by
Charlie Higson
2005-present		 James Bond writer
2008		 Succeeded by
incumbent


v • d • e
Works by Sebastian Faulks
Novels
Non-fiction
The Vintage Book of War Stories · The Fatal Englishman: Three Short Lives · Pistache