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The Fatal Englishman: Three Short Lives

sebastian faulks

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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 his generation 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 of 1920's 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 classic account 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 was twenty-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 doomed young men, Faulks paints an oblique portrait of English society as it changed in the twentieth century, from the Victorian era to the modern world.

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,1996

This edition

Format
336 pages, Paperback
Published
March 12, 2002 by Vintage
ISBN
9780375727443
ASIN
0375727442
Language
English

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sebastian faulks

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Rating(4 / 5.0, 64 votes)
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64 reviews All reviews
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Kanyuu
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Three biographical stories about three men who dies young. Apart from the first character, an artist, I had not really heard of the others. Their stories were remarkably similar in many ways; they all seemed to rush head-forward towards their early deaths without much thought. Interesting read.
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megumiisee
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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I think I'm finished trying to like Sebastian Faulks' books. Such interesting characters, but they end up sounding more like a rather cardboard research project. I've never been able to connect with his writing.
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Valentine07
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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It might well be good but it's not for me I'm afraid. Had to give up on this one. It's my fault for not finding out what it was about before starting it.
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AnmolNegi
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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While the three mini-biographies in this volume were clearly told, I reamin unsure as to why it recieved plaudits. There were some links between the lives and fates of the men that justified putting them together but for me it was nothing special, sorry.

The story of the self-destructive airman was the most powerful - maybe because of it's position at the end it gained strength by being an implicit commentary on the other two lives ... or is that just me trying to be as deep as a more literary reviewer?

The edition I have is not one that is shown - a Vintage paperback with a detail from a Blake painting (the same one used on the front of some editions of Skellig I think) on the cover. I read about Wood's painttings blind as I was unaware some had been reproduced in the plates section - a pointer to them would have been nice for someone who doesn't automatically turn to the pictures first but takes them in their place as a diversion.

This will probably become a BookCrossing book in due course, as I am not bursting to re-read it.
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Pan151
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Having read Richard Hillary's impressive memoir, The Last Enemy, I saw a Goodreads reviewer noted that Faulks had written this book, which included a brief biography of Hillary. For that reason I read this book and found the portion on Hillary, a Battle of Britain airman, well done. While Faulks revisits what Hillary had written in 1942, he also adds to the story, detailing the airman's death in a plane crash that same year. It was a rewarding insight.

The other two brief biographies were less engaging. The first was of the British artist Christopher Wood, who led a driven live dedicated to becoming a great painter. He was achieving some success in this quest when he underwent emotional trauma and committed suicide (no spoiler, that is why the subtitle cites "short lives") by leaping in front of a moving train.

The other account is of a bright young lad, Jeremy Wolfenden, who seemed destined for great things. He settled on a career in journalism, becoming a foreign correspondent for several English newspapers, including a stint in Cold War Moscow. His homosexuality allowed the Soviets to compromise him and use him for espionage purposes. The British intelligence agency also made use of him in the same fashion. Despite his vaunted intellect his self destructive behavior led to his death from alcoholism. Some effort was made to link his death to one or another of the intelligence services with which he was involved, but Faulks pretty well refutes this idea. For all his promise, his life seems quite peripheral.

Every life, even short ones, contains a story, perhaps. Of these three, Hillary's seems the most purposeful.
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CabbageRoll
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Really moving account of three brilliant young 20th century lives cut short. A great theme and really well researched and written.
Jeremy Wolfenden was especially fascinating: Faulks writes about how you’d have expected all his very brilliant contemporaries to have gone on to build a just, intelligent and strong society in Britain, but this just didn’t really happen.
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Duri1n
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Brilliant. Excellent choice of subjects. Is there a link between Jeremy and the setting for "on green dolphin street" or am I letting the cold war paranoia take hold? A very scholarly book and too short. Hope the author tries this again.
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Mattegd
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Have stopped reading this book because I found the first story became boring. May come back to it at some point.
Usually I enjoy books by Sebastian Faulks and rate them highly.
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