Sebastian Faulks
Sebastian Faulks
Sebastian Charles Faulks CBEis 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. He has also published novels with a contemporary setting, most recently A Week in December, and a James Bond continuation novel, Devil May Care, as well as a continuation of P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves series, Jeeves and the Wedding Bells. He is a team captain on BBC Radio 4...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth20 April 1953
names worn recalls
You can't recall someone whose name has worn away.
running war book
There arent many great passages written about food, but I love one by George Millar, who worked for the SOE in the second world war and wrote a book called Horned Pigeon. He had been on the run and hadnt eaten for a week, and his description of the cheese fondue he smells in the peasant kitchen of a house in eastern France is unbelievable.
enjoy cant ifs
If you have only one life, you cant altogether ignore the question: are you enjoying it?
fool would-be hints
If I could eat only one thing for the rest of my life, it would be rhubarb fool, which I make with ginger and a hint of elderflower cordial.
derivatives commodity more-money
Life can be lived at a remove. You trade in futures, and then you trade in derivatives of futures. Banks make more money trading derivatives than they do trading actual commodities.
memorable long meals
In the 1970s, British food was beginning to get good, whereas in France it was just starting its long, sad decline. My most memorable meals, however, have been in Italy.
religious character facts
The nicest characters in A Week in December are, in fact, Muslims - and their religious devotion is one of the things that defines them.
girl heaven mind
Shakespeare drew a map of the human mind as clearly as Newton mapped the heavens. Wht is one considered science and the other fir only to be mocked with jokes about pretty girls and drury lane?
people alive conscious
This is how most people live: alive, but not conscious; conscious but not aware; aware, but intermittently.
mad vagueness imagine
A bit of the vagueness of music stops you going completely mad, I imagine.
thinking way would-be
I think closeness to death would be pretty exhilarating in a way, and friendship, yeh, and selflessness, a kind of selflessness, a sense of your own worthlessness, I think, is pretty exhilarating.
believe fighting simple
All my life I had lived on the presumption that there was no existence beyond... flesh, the moment of being alive... then nothing. I had searched in superstition... But there was nothing. Then I heard the sound of my own life leaving me. It was so... tender. I regretted that I had paid it no attention. Then I believed in the wisdom of what other men had found before me... I saw that those simple things might be true... I never wanted to believe in them because it was better to fight my own battle. You can believe in something without compromising the burden of your own existence.
thinking seems finished
I don't think you ever understand your life - not till it's finished and probably not then either. The more I live the less I seem to understand.
believe alive may
I am driven by a greater force than I can resist. I believe that force has its own reason and its own morality even if they may never be clear to me while I am alive