Fires Which Burned Brightly : A Life in Progress - SIGNED COPY

Author(s): Faulks, Sebastian
Binding: Hardback,
Date of Publication: 02/09/2025,
Pagination: 352 pages,
ISBN13\EAN\SKU: 9781529154658,
Description:

‘A wonderful portrait of an age, and of a writer’ RORY STEWART‘Utterly fascinating’ DAVID KYNASTON‘As charming and funny in schoolboy episodes as he is thought-provoking in the darker environs of mental health, Sebastian Faulks is always resonant, civilised and sane’ MARK KNOPFLER *** In Fires Which Burned Brightly, Faulks, a reluctant memoirist, offers readers a series of detailed snapshots from a life in progress. They include a post-war rural childhood – ‘cold mutton and wet washing on a rack over the range’ – the booze-sodden heyday of Fleet Street and a career as one of the country’s most acclaimed novelists.

There are not one, but two daring escapes from boarding school; the delirium of a jetlagged American book tour; the writing of Birdsong in his brother’s house in 1992; and memorable trips across the channel to France. Politics, psychiatry and frustrated ventures into the world of entertainment are analysed with patience and rueful humour.

The book is driven by a desire ‘to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.’ It ends with a tribute to Faulks’s parents and a sense of how his own generation was shaped by the disruptive power of war and its aftermath.

Sharply perceptive and alive with a generous wit, Fires Which Burned Brightly is a work of subtle yet profound intelligence and warmth.

PRAISE FOR SEBASTIAN FAULKS'Faulks writes with great emotional authority' SUNDAY TIMES'A prodigiously talented writer' NEW YORK TIMES'Faulks is beyond doubt a master' FINANCIAL TIMES'The most impressive novelist of his generation' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH