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
people alive conscious
This is how most people live: alive, but not conscious; conscious but not aware; aware, but intermittently.
books demanding history numbers sold subjects war won
To have been able to write the books I wanted to write, on demanding subjects like war and the history of psychiatry, and for them to have sold in the numbers they have - and then go around saying: 'Actually, I'd also like to have won the Costa Book of the Year?' That would be ridiculous.
ambitious attempt far honorable matter program seldom transfer truth
As far as 'Birdsong' is concerned, I think the television program made a very honorable attempt at it, but the truth of the matter is that adaptations of long, ambitious books very seldom transfer well to the screen, and why would they?
major music themes
All my books are about one major idea and two or three subsidiary ones. I have thought a lot about music when constructing books, and I like the way in music that themes come back.
emotion generation individual slightly understanding
My parents' generation didn't have any understanding of psychology or emotion or individual temperament. In fact, they were slightly embarrassed by all those words.
best developing few films inward novel pictures portray processes relationships
Why would a novel - which is all about the inward processes of people's developing feelings and developing relationships - why would you be able to portray that in pictures with as few words as possible, which is what the best films are?
brief christian fully human nature religion simply understand
The religion I know most about, which is the Christian one, would simply say that it's not really for one man or woman to know fully and to understand the nature of our brief human existence.
annoyed home interiors interviews remarks shops taste
I don't do interviews at home any more because my wife doesn't like having her taste in interiors put through the mill. And I get annoyed when journalists make snide remarks about the annoyingly pretentious shops in the neighbourhood - because I hate them just as much.
accessible issues large people
I want to write about serious things, but I want to write about them in a way that makes them accessible to a large number of people - to take them through the argument by dramatizing the circumstances in which these issues are being discussed.
against ethically great holds proper testament
It is fair to say the New Testament is the most ethically sophisticated of the great scriptures; the proper comparison for the Qur'an is with the Old Testament - against which it holds its own.
beat best console depends hugely possible sort within worked
Certainly, we all have within us the potential to live in a hugely different way. And how happy you can make yourself, I think, a lot depends on how much you beat yourself up about that; and how much you can, in some sort of providential way, console yourself and say, 'Well, it's all worked out for the best, in the best of all possible worlds.'
battle melancholy tremendous
I have a tremendous battle with melancholy and depression.
attraction books dissimilar history possible publishing
It's possible there are no two books in publishing history more dissimilar than 'Human Traces' and 'Devil May Care.' And that was really the attraction of it.
britain cultural found seems simply united
I've found contemporary Britain difficult to write about because it seems to me to have lacked gravity or grandeur. This is some cultural problem which I don't really understand. It simply isn't the same in the United States.