Sebastian Faulks

Sebastian Faulks was born in the market town of Newbury in Berkshire, England, to Peter Faulks and Pamela Lawless. Faulks’ father was a highly decorated soldier and judge, and his uncle, Sir Neville Faulks, also served as a judge in the High Court. Faulks attended preparatory school in Newbury and studied English at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. After graduating, he worked for a short time as a teacher before becoming a journalist for The Daily Telegraph and its sister newspaper, The Sunday Telegraph. Faulks began writing fiction early in his career, and in 1984 he published his first novel, A Trick of the Light. In 1986, he became the literary editor of The Independent, an online newspaper, and continued to write, publishing Birdsong to critical acclaim in 1993. After the success of Birdsong, Faulks quit working as a journalist and turned to his fiction full-time, quickly becoming an important figure in contemporary British literature. By the end of 1993, Faulks was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a society founded by King George IV in 1820 to award literary merit and talent. In 2002, he was awarded Commander of the Excellent Order of the British Empire, the British order of chivalry, for his contribution to literature, earning him the honorific CBE. In keeping with the themes of war and history in Birdsong, Faulks sat on the Government Advisory Group for the Commemoration of the First World War from 2013 to 2018, where he advocated for public remembrance of the Great War. Faulks married his wife, Veronica Youlten, in 1989, and the couple went on to have three children together. Faulks and Youlten currently reside in London, England.