Sebastian Faulks

Sebastian Charles Faulks (born 20 April 1953) is a British novelist, journalist and broadcaster.

He is best known for his historical novels set in France – The Girl at the Lion d'Or, Birdsong and Charlotte Gray.

Faulks was born on 20 April 1953 in Donnington, Berkshire, to Peter Faulks and Pamela (née Lawless).

His father was a decorated soldier (he won the Military Cross), who later became a solicitor and circuit judge.

Set in Cambridge in the 1970s, it is narrated by Cambridge University fresher Mike Engleby.

Faulks's first novel, A Trick of the Light, was published in 1984.

He continued to work as a journalist, becoming the first literary editor of The Independent in 1986.

He became deputy editor of the Independent on Sunday in 1989; in the same year he published The Girl at the Lion d'Or, the first of his historical novels set in France.

Faulks married Veronica (née Youlten) in 1989.

Faulks is best known for his three novels set in early twentieth-century France.The first, The Girl at the Lion d'Or, was published in 1989.

They have two sons, William and Arthur, born 1990 and 1996 respectively, and one daughter, Holly, born 1992.

Faulks is a fan of West Ham United football club.

Debrett's lists his recreations as tennis and wine.

A longtime cricket fan and player, Faulks is a member of the Authors XI cricket team.

In 1991 he left The Independent. He wrote for various newspapers as a freelancer for the next ten years.

Following the success of Birdsong (1993), Faulks quit journalism to write full-time.

Faulks was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1993 and appointed CBE for services to literature in 2002.

Faulks appears regularly on British TV and radio.

This was followed by Birdsong (1993), and Charlotte Gray (1998).

The latter two were best-sellers, and Charlotte Gray was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

He was a regular team captain on BBC Radio 4's literary quiz The Write Stuff (1998–2014).

In April 2003 Birdsong came 13th in the BBC's Big Read initiative which aimed to identify Britain's best loved novels.

Faulks's 2005 novel, Human Traces, was described by Trevor Nunn as "A masterpiece, one of the great novels of this or any other century."

The quiz involves the panellists each week writing a pastiche of the work of a selected author; Faulks has published a collection of his efforts as a book, Pistache (2006), which was described in The Scotsman as "a little treasure of a book. Faulks can catch, and caricature, another writers' fingerprints and foibles with a delicious precision that only a deep love of writing can teach".

In 2007, Faulks published Engleby.

He read English at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, of which he was made an honorary fellow in 2008.

Whilst at Cambridge he participated in University Challenge, in which Emmanuel College lost in the opening round.

Faulks commented that his team was most probably hampered by a trip to the pub before the show, as recommended by the show's producer.

After graduating, Faulks worked as a teacher at a private school in Camden Town, and then as a journalist for the Daily and Sunday Telegraph.

He has also published novels with a contemporary setting, most recently A Week in December (2009) and Paris Echo, (2018) and a James Bond continuation novel, Devil May Care (2008), as well as a continuation of P. G. Wodehouse's Jeeves series, Jeeves and the Wedding Bells (2013).

He was a team captain on BBC Radio 4 literary quiz The Write Stuff.

In 2011 Faulks presented a four-part BBC Two series called Faulks on Fiction, looking at the British novel and its characters.

He also wrote a series tie-in book of the same name.

From 2013 to 2018, he sat on the Government Advisory Group for the Commemoration of the First World War.

The Literary Review has said that "Faulks has the rare gift of being popular and literary at the same time"; The Sunday Telegraph called him "One of the most impressive novelists of his generation ... who is growing in authority with every book".

His brother Edward Faulks, Baron Faulks KC, a barrister, became a Conservative Government Minister in January 2014 in the Ministry of Justice.

His uncle was Sir Neville Faulks, a High Court judge.

He was educated at Elstree School, Reading, and went on to Wellington College, Berkshire.

In August 2014, Faulks was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian opposing Scottish independence in the run-up to September's referendum on that issue.

He has since published eight novels, the most recent being Where My Heart Used to Beat (2015), Paris Echo (2018) and Snow Country (2021).