Fires Which Burned Brightly: A Life in Progress

by Sebastian Faulks

'A wise and heartfelt piece of writing' THE TIMES

'Witty' INDEPENDENT

'Wry and reflective . . . a soulful look at a life in words' i PAPER

‘A wonderful portrait of an age, and of a writer’ RORY STEWART, author of Politics on the Edge

‘Utterly fascinating’ DAVID KYNASTON, author of A Northern Wind

'Shot through with the kind of depth and detail that can only come from a masterful writer finally turning his pen to his own life. Fresh, wise and finely-wrought' ALICE WINN, author of In Memoriam

‘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

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Biography

338 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 2, 2025

About the author

Sebastian Faulks is a British novelist, journalist, and broadcaster best known for his acclaimed historical novels set in France, including The Girl at the Lion d'Or, Birdsong, and Charlotte Gray. Alongside these, he has written contemporary fiction, a James Bond continuation novel (Devil May Care), and a Jeeves homage (Jeeves and the Wedding Bells). A former literary editor and journalist, Faulks gained widespread recognition with Birdsong, which solidified his literary reputation. He has also appeared regularly on British media, notably as a team captain on BBC Radio 4's The Write Stuff, and authored the TV tie-in Faulks on Fiction. Honored as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and appointed CBE for his services to literature, Faulks continues to publish widely, with The Seventh Son released in 2023.

Reviews

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed it. There was a lot of variety in the ten essays and it always kept moving forward. I loved how Sebastian Faulks would try to engage us, his audience, by asking questions such as, "Have you ever ridden a Harley over the Golden Gate Bridge?"

My response was to perk up and think, why, no, I haven't but I'm intrigued, do go on. Faulks writes that, "The cross winds are terrible, that bridge is a monster. You end up with forearms rigid from just clinging on." Makes you feel glad to be alive doesn't it. I can imagine the exhilaration of it, from my couch.

Oh, and he refers to America as "this extraordinary self-invented country." I must say, I was surprised to find myself feeling quite homesick for America while I listened to Faulks tell about his adventures there.

The final essay is particularly tender as he talks about his brother, mother and father. He writes that he has tried to convey his feelings, however he has come to share his father's puzzlement and goes on to say, "As a parent, you do everything you can to help your children, to protect and even shape them but in the end they slip through your embrace, they remain what they appeared at the instant of their birth, a mystery."

[Peter Burton · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable read but clearly it’s better if you know his books.Instructive,I thought,of the dangers of alcohol and drugs.In fact the section on his mental health and a pitted history of the atttempts to understand it are very good.I enjoyed his childhood and early years/jobs but felt that the later parts were thin and not so instructive.Perhaps if you knew his books in detail this section would interest you.He seems to be a nice person

[Lola · Rating 3 out of 5]

much preferred hearing how faulks went about researching and writing birdsong to actually reading birdsong.

fair play that he helped deliver his and his wife’s second kid on a bathroom floor

the end made me cry, his essay on family, his mother, brother and dad was truly beautiful, and i also really enjoyed the essay on mental health and schizophrenia

couldve done without the multiple ‘i wanted women to be there (insert panel show/publishing/journalism) but my (insert sort of boss figure) wouldnt let me :(‘ points. Also the line that was like ‘if this was a proper memoir id have to talk about my women friends but as its not, i don’t’

you do get a sense of a life across these meandering essays though. overall i had a decent time

[Howard Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoyable. I’m a big fan of SF’s novels and found the background to the inspiration behind several of them most illuminating. His nuanced use of language shines through as ever. The book obviously reflects a very full and varied life yet somehow manages to capture details of his life’s journey. I found the section on the US especially interesting though might take issue with SF’s dismissal of English authors’ powers of observation compared to their US counterparts. Hasn’t SF read Alan Bennett? The book only prompts me to read the few remaining SF works and to re-read several-especially Charlotte Gray which I probably rather underestimated at the time.

[BrianC75 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read most of Sebastian Faulks’ books and thoroughly enjoyed them, so was looking forward to this. The fact that my own life cycle differed from the author’s by a few short years gave the whole experience an additional boost. His descriptions of the important events, places and people over the period covered took me back to my own experiences at that time.
The quality of the author’s writing is what makes the book so enjoyable. The characters he meets and his experiences are wonderfully described - at times the reader is smiling broadly, laughing out loud or indeed fighting back a tear. Such is the quality here. Excellent.

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve read several books by Sebastian Faulks. His last one, The Seventh Son was my favourite and I highly recommend it. I do not usually read memoirs but I watched Faulks online at the Hay Festival winter weekend recently talking about Fires That Burn Brightly and it piqued my interest particularly as he described it as 10 essays rather than a continuous stream of consciousness. I was attracted to the organizational aspect and sense of completion attached to each essay. In this I was not disappointed

I chose to listen to the audiobook having enjoyed Faulks’ voice at the Hay interview. Again I was not disappointed.

The opening essay brought back many memories of a 50s childhood. Faulks was born about six weeks after me in 1953 and I was thrilled to hear his recounting of toys, songs, tv shows and events that were shared and very clear in my mind. He writes about them with fondness but without syrupy nostalgia. Being a small child in the 50s - a post-war experience - he in Berkshire and I in south London was not romantic but we were both happy children with loving parents.

Beyond the first essay our paths divided very far apart as Faulks came from a middle class family and was sent to boarding school from the age of eight.His father had been a Major in WWll and after he was demobbed trained as a solicitor. My father (a year younger than Faulks’) left school at 15 and spent the entire war in the Royal Navy leaving finally as a Petty Officer. His post war future was as a postman-sorter and eventually the manager of a branch post office. So yes very different experiences after the first essay. I did not go to boarding school and I am very grateful for that.

I enjoyed most of the following eight essays for one reason or another especially those that dealt with Faulks’ experience as a journalist in the old days of Fleet St and his work on the founding of The Independent. His essay on mental health and his own experience with what he calls “a post adolescent breakdown” as if it is an accepted medical diagnosis was also interesting.

The big BUT that is coming has nothing to do with the difference in our post 50s lives but his frequent preoccupation and glorification of excessive consumption of alcohol. He quotes his father (whom he adored) as saying “I may be an alcoholic, but I am not a dipsomaniac”, a phrase Faulks and his father seemed to find amusing. Faulks also shares that prior to his two year “post adolescent breakdown” he drank heavily, daily and took the early 70s version of recreational drugs and yet he doesn’t seem to make any kind of connection between these behaviours and his illness. Maybe there is none. especially as he has made it to 72 with a pretty ‘impressive’ alcohol habit and seemingly no further evidence of mental illness; except perhaps the drinking itself? Quite simply all the booze talk is at best juvenile and at worse boring. It disappointed me that he used a whole essay on the tracking down of good wine in remote vineyards and the consumption of said wine. This together with the unnecessary need to litter so many otherwise interesting adventures with what and how much he drank was a disappointment.

The last essay is as delightful as the first not just because it is not ‘marinated’. Faulks finishes with a very loving tribute to his parents and his wife Veronica to whom he has been married for more than 40 years - no mean feat in these times. I know because so have I 😉

[Shazza Hoppsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed hearing Sebastian Faulks read his reflective essays, in what adds up to a story of his life. I began to love reading with Maugham, Shirley Hazzard, William Boyd and Sebastian Faulks.
I also grew up in England and the early chapters triggered memories of my childhood with Hornsby train sets and older cousins in Canterbury.
His fascination with war history reminded me how damaged my Sargent major grandfather was from both wars. I don’t think I ever really got to know him because of his “shell shock”.
He is a functional alcoholic but does say you should consider your genes to gauge how alcohol may affect you. This idea rang true for me in the essay on researching mental illness. In our family we say mental illness doesn’t run, it gallops.

[Jonathan Pool · Rating 3 out of 5]

At the end of the book in the last “essay” Au Revoir I, at last, felt that Sebastian Faulks spoke from the heart. His recollections of, and love for his mother and father were heartfelt and moving. As is his love and respect for his brother, Edward.
Alas, for the most part, the collection felt perfunctory and if anything diminished my regard for the author.

What I learned from this work of non fiction is

• film/ Tv screen adaptations of Faulks’s work disappointed him. Birdsong his life’s seminal work, was not what he would have produced given the executive role. I agree with him.
• War, the army, service and patriotism are deeply embedded in his family and form the most meaningful part of his life(his side hustle as he puts it)
• Mental Health is something he has always been acutely conscious of, and has researched at least as comprehensively as his war writing. Personally I associate him with stories set in c.19th institutions and asylums, and with his magnus opus Human Traces
• Alcohol. Faulks writes with an honesty reading his relationship with alcohol. There is too much detail on the virtues of various wine grapes and vineyards. Keep that for a piece in Winemakers Monthly as detailed by a knowledgeable consumer.
• Touring and presentation. Faulks candidly admits that he looks scruffy, and is not a natural raconteur or entertainer. Despite overcoming childhood shyness he struggles. The necessary book promotions-and in particular a lengthy USA promotional tour- are purgatory for him.
I’m not very sympathetic to his outlook on this and think he needs to reward his loyal buying public with better performances for those who engage considerately.
A personal experience of mine backs this up. Faulks chose to promote his book Snow Country at an event I attended and it happened to coincide with an England cricket test.
Faulks loves his cricket; of that there is no doubt, but still..there’s no excuse for ‘pre-signing’ books and departing the stage as though the building was on fire.

Publicity surrounding this book indicates a difference of approach between Faulks and his publisher on the material to be used and the purpose of the book. The time lines jumped around within individual essays, confusingly.
Is this book a memoir? is this personal, and from the heart.? Only in very brief snatches I’m afraid.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Much as he looks back to childhood and writes about key moments in his life, Sebastian Faulks’ ‘Fires Which Burned Brightly’ proclaims on its cover that it is not a memoir, and that’s fine by me. Frankly, I’ll take any of his ten essays, in any order, given that they are so well written, so thoughtful, wonderfully self-deprecating, and full of signs of the times on which he’s dwelling.

His chapters on childhood opened up rarely regarded memory banks of my own childhood. Just a few years younger than the writer, I remember the mutton gristle, the reliance on the imagination for entertainment, the peculiarities of village school life and the horror of boarding school misery at the age of eight. Do you have to have had a similar childhood to become fully immersed in the constraints and freedoms of post WW2 life? Not at all. The delights and fears of childhood explored here prompt us all to think about where we’ve come from.

I particularly enjoyed the chapters which focus on the birth of specific novels, the research undertaken, the self-discipline required to release the narrative and, finally, the more tedious aspects of the publicity circus. As a result, I shall certainly re-read his earliest novels, reminded of the immediacy he creates and the intelligence of his story telling.

Whilst some may be disappointed that very little emphasis is given to his current domestic set-up, clearly a very happy one, I applaud this. It could feel rather contrary not to focus on friends and family but the focus in this collection of essays is, Faulks explains, “…not the story of a life, and maybe that’s just as well because I’m not sure there’s a documentary way of writing about such things. A novel’s the best place for emotional truths: it’s made for them.”

An excellent, fascinating, thought-provoking set of essays. If you think you might dip into them from time to time, be warned. Once immersed, it’s hard to put this book down.

My thanks to NetGalley and Random House UK, Cornerstone for a copy of this book in exchange for a fair review.

[Vicuña · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m always wary of authors who chose to narrate their own books. Sometimes there seems to be a writer conceit that makes them believe they can deliver the vest narration. In this case, there’s certainly no conceit and Sebastian Faulks narration is superb throughout. I’ve whipped through this in a couple of sessions, absolutely mesmerised by the scope of the subject matter in each of the essays. His publisher wanted a linear approach to what is essentially an autobiography, although I believe a random order, as originally envisaged, would have worked just as well.
I’ve been reading for some 70 years, being a couple of years older than Mr Faulks. This rates in the top five non fiction titles I’ve ever read. It was partly a trip down memory lane; evocative as so many memories of things past were stirred; Peter Dominic, barley wine, smoking, IOW festival…an endless list. I feel as if the listener has the privilege of sitting and chatting with the author. His revelations feel intimate without being introspective or pompous. His days as a boarder sounded Dickensian but he still triumphed. I loved the soundtracks he references throughout, having similar musical taste and I’ve revisited some of those long forgotten tracks since finishing this. There is a Spotify list. I’ve also learned so much; insight into mental illness was fascinating and I was spellbound by the way he prepared to write Birdsong. Again, this is a title I’ll revisit with a different insight and awareness. His journalist days were a hoot and overall, I can’t think of an audio title I’ve enjoyed so much. He comes across as a very likeable man, incredibly intelligent but grounded and I’ll listen to this again.

[Liz T · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having read many of Sebastian Faulks’ novels I was expecting ‘Fires Which Burned Brightly - A Life In Progress’, to contain the same attention to detail and depth of analysis; I was not disappointed. The story of his childhood in the 1950’s and 60’s brings the period vividly to life in the recall of fine detail and humorous anecdotes. The account of his time as a newspaper journalist is both informative and entertaining, and insight into his subsequent career as a writer fascinating. The hybrid format, described in the forward as a series of essays, allows for inclusion of his thoughts on psychiatry, the progression of post war Western capitalist society and the development of our current politics. These are well argued and informative. Thanks to the author and NetGalley for an advanced reading copy in return for an honest review.

[Derek MEACHER · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not an autobiography, according to the author, but ´A life in progress’. In fact an absorbing life emerges from these pages, but so much more. Lives. The lives of contemporaries, like myself. Reading these pages enabled me to return to moments /situations in my own life, many of which had drifted below the surface.
A brilliantly conceived and equally brilliantly written account that Faulks has shared primarily with all those listed at the conclusion of the text, with family members whose lives have been completed and with the rest of us for whom his book is a window to the truth of our existence.

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Best described as a book of autobiographical essays, it's not quite a memoir and definitely not an autobiography yet you come away from it feeling that you know Sebastian Faulks as well as you know anyone. The first two essays are heartbreaking and the final one is such a moving tribute to his parents and brother. And the overwhelming centre of the book is the depth of grief he still carries for the soldiers of the first world war and the impact on him of his research for Birdsong. There were one or two middle essays that didn't match up to these others but overall I devoured it greedily and 'enjoyed' it far more than I thought I would.

[Douglas Mills · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am such an avid reader of Sebastian Faulks that I am sure I would find his shopping list interesting. This is a great book - the poignant ending made me stop and think about such moments in my own life - he captures that deeply personal moment beautifully. My only frustration with this series of personal anecdotes is that he does state at the beginning of his book that he was not keen on writing a personal memoir and at times, particularly in chapter 4, this is evident. However, the majority of his reflections are Sebastian Faulks at his best - rich in description and meaning - simply delightful.

[Peter Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sebastian Faulks is a highly accomplished writer and I very much enjoy his writing.
So when I started this memoir, I was very much looking forward to it. But even I couldn’t anticipate how good it would be.
It’s sincere, emotional, funny and incredibly honest, with tales of book tours and escapes from boarding school, and homage to his parents. This truly is a remarkable book and I loved every moment of it.

[David Galvani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some good stuff here especially on how he receives inspiration for his novels. Clearly loved and missed his parents. Labours his love of drink etc and lack of application at college, admitting this lead to mental health issues. This in turn lead to may be his greatest novel, Human Traces.

A good read, but his novels are better.

[Nicola · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed parts of the book very much: the description of his childhood and life at school; his book tour in America; and the section about research will send me back to read and reread some of his novels. Other sections dragged. Faulks is clearly a kind man and interesting companion but I think I would rather read his novels.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading these reflections on his life by Sebastian Faulks. As he discussed writing and promoting each of his novels, it was taking me back to what I was doing and where I was when I first read each of them.

[Peter Dierinck · Rating 3 out of 5]

Autobiografisch werk. Ik hield. van het deel "sand in the gears" over psychische kwetsbaarheid en psychiatrie (p.127-168) Andere delen zoals "whisky, syrah, cab and ale" over drank en meer bepaald zijn grote voorliefde voor wijn zijn echt veel te langdradig. Lees dus vooral zijn romans.

[Vicky Denny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Author’s life told in essays with different themes. Gave a real sense of him, I was not aware of his significant mental health problem. I found the essays on filming of his books less engaging but in its entirety very enjoyable.

[Alistair Crine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very enjoyable read: strong essays on early years, boarding school, first war research, final one on close family. Not so keen on the wine country stories! Thought there could've been a deeper reflection on impact of drinking on his mental health?

[Valerie McGurk · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thought provoking set of essays. Once you get started you just want to read the next one. Parts made me smile as I thought of my own childhood. An interesting read.

[Mrs Fieldmouse · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautiful, humble, insightful and entertaining memoir. I can't think of anyone who wouldn't enjoy it.

[Ann Koenig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sebastion has concentrated on his writing career which involved descriptions of his research - great novelist

[Elaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

My what an interesting and lovely book!
You get to know Sebastien Faulks so much better in the essays
Easy reading but riveting for all that

[Graham Fi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good read. Going to a resident private school sounds horrendous.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite an enjoyable read but not as good as his fiction (different genre, I know).

[Alanna · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.75*

[Maria WD · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it, but then I'm besotted with his work.
His last paragraphs, so tenderly written, meant it was never truer for me that finishing a good book is like losing an old friend...

[Dulcie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully weighted. All of Faulks back catalogue is going on to my re-read list