The Fatal Englishman: Three Short Lives

The three people in question are young men of brilliance. Their talents - artistic, courageous, and intellectual - are as varied as their personalities and surrounding environments.

Yet there is commonality throughout the narratives. These are men with a thermal nuclear intensity of purpose and dedication - a snap dragon occupies each man's shoulder. These are men living within oceanic environments of change, where the forces that tempt them in to the water are the forces that eventually cover and destroy them.

Few people will have heard about the lives of Christopher, Richard and Jeremy before opening the book. I was glad about that. It creates a freshness that is often lacking in biographies; there are no prejudices or expectations beyond the historical setting of each story. The book is set barely a generation away from today, but few of us can really appreciate the lives and surroundings that Faulkes is describing.

How does Faulkes achieve this? Well I sensed the same kind of Ravel's Bolero approach that was evident in the final stages of Birdsong, where the narrative slowly builds and builds - tempting you towards the tragic climax. Mix in Faulkes' journalistic precision, the right focus and balance on historical detail and I think you have an answer for why these biographies work.

For me the most engaging was number two - the story of Richard Hillary the fighter pilot. Perhaps this is familiar territory for Faulks, the chaos of war and its' tragic ironies. I think it's easy to pick up the evident fascination for the incredible changes that war creates inside the individual.

Let me conclude by summarising Faulk's achievement as a well formed tribute to three fascinating men living in three different and compelling worlds. Enjoy the experience!


Compelling biography of three exceptional British men   October 9, 1998
5 out of 5 found this review helpful

Acclaimed novelist Sebastian Faulks (Birdsong, Charlotte Gray) turns his hand to biography with this vivid account of the brief lives of a 1920s painter, a World War II flying ace, and a Cold War spy.

Christopher Wood was a gifted but struggling artist who eked out an existence on the fringes of the glittering Paris social scene, before committing suicide at the age of 29 in 1930. Richard Hillary was a decorated war hero who returned to flying after recovering from severe injuries, only to die in an fatal air crash at 24, and Jeremy Wolfenden was a formidably intelligent and rakish Cambridge graduate who may or may not have been recruited as a spy while working in Moscow in the early 1960s; at 31, burnt-out, he died of a suspected drink and drugs overdose.

Faulks writes an intense, compassionate account of these tragically short lives; immersing the reader in each gripping yet ultimately poignant personal story, as well as sharply evoking the decade to which each of the fatal Englishmen belonged.