The Fatal Englishman: Three Short Lives

In The Fatal Englishman," " his first work of nonfiction, Sebastian Faulks explores the lives of three remarkable men. Each had the seeds of greatness; each was a beacon to hisgeneration and left something of value behind; yet each one died tragically young.

Christopher Wood, only twenty-nine when he killed himself, was a painter who lived most of his short life in the beau monde of1920s Paris, where his charm, good looks, and the dissolute life that followed them sometimes frustrated his ambition and achievement as an artist.

Richard Hillary was a WWII fighter pilot who wrote a classicaccount of his

experiences, "The Last Enemy, " but died in a mysterious training accident while defying doctor's orders to stay grounded after horrific burn injuries; he wastwenty-three.

Jeremy Wolfenden, hailed by his contemporaries as the brightest Englishman of

his generation, rejected the call of academia to become a hack journalist in Cold War Moscow. A spy, alcoholic, and open homosexual at a time when such activity was still illegal, he died at the age of thirty-one, a victim of his own recklessness and of the peculiar pressures of his time.

Through the lives of these doomedyoung men, Faulks paints an oblique

portrait of English society as it changed in the twentieth century, from the Victorian era to the modern world.

"From the Trade Paperback edition."

Sebastian Faulks is best known for his trilogy of novels set in France: The Girl at the Lion d’Or, Birdsong, and Charlotte Gray, the latter two of which were bestsellers. After a period in France, he and his family now live in London.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Christopher Wood — Richard Hillary — Jeremy Wolfenden.