The Fatal Englishman: Three Short Lives

by Sebastian Faulks

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.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History, British Literature, Historical, War, Biography Memoir

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

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

[Mike Mason · Rating 4 out of 5]

A strange old looking book found in a charity shop in Felixstowe. Strange in that it is a non-fiction work by the author and focusses on three Englishmen who died young. Before reading I quickly went to Wikipedia to read up on them. But their short lives are fleshed out more fully in the book.

All three men are really touched by War. Wood is the first British painter to have been successful in France. A gay man who through drink and drugs finally throws himself in front of a train. Hillary is a fighter pilot who tragically suffers burns. Being rebuilt by the pioneering plastic surgeons in East Grinstead. Finally choosing to return to training exercises when he didn’t need to and dying in a plane crash. Only being identified by his watch and his coffin being filled by sand. Wolfenden I found the saddest of the three. A homosexual exploited by both the UK and Russian secret services. He dies from over drinking. Although there is a suggestion the CIA finished him off.

Faulks stories are dry but well written with quotes, interviews and his musings.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is something of a rarity: biographies of three young Englishman by a celebrated English novelist...who has his own fatal attraction for readers of fiction...& in one 300 page book. Christopher Wood, an artist...Richard Hillary, a fighter pilot in 1940...& Jeremy Wolfenden...a brilliant misfit in post-war England...all three men with inclinations that defied social respectability...all extraordinarily fated to die, already spent forces of both nature & English individuality...all three self-destructive, desperate & beyond the limits of real understanding...each handsome, heroic-looking...& out of any rational control from other people...each motivated by their own fatal energies.
An absorbing book, full of reality...even as the three fatal Englishmen live in their own unreal universes of the senses...all racing to reach the final acts of their dramatic lives.

[Zainab Magdy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Faulks is a brilliant writer, The Fatal Englishman was the first nonfiction book that I read for him and I dont like nonfiction. The book presents the lives of three young English men who died very young and all the pressures laid on them by the society. The book is at times painful but it is very real and raw in Faulks' usual mellow, soft and intense prose.

[Stephen Goldenberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

A rare non-fiction book from Sebastian Faulks although written very much like fiction. These three lives are linked not only by their shortness. They all seem to represent a particular type of Englishness. Furthermore, each life represents a small but very effective snapshot of the era in which they lived - Christopher Wood epitomises the bohemian roaring twenties artistic milieu of London and Paris: Richard Hillary, Spitfire pilot, is an icon for the Second World War generation: and Jeremy Wolfenden is at the heart of the Cold War spying scandals of the 1950s and 60s. The other thing they have in common is that they all had very close relationships with their mothers, but cold and distant fathers.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very good book indeed, which gets better as it goes along.

The first biography, of artist Christopher Wood, is good. The second, of Battle of Britain ace Richard Hillary, is very good, and the third - journalist, spy, and flawed genius Jeremy Wolfenden - is excellent.

Recommended.

[luce goose · Rating 3 out of 5]

My enforced non-fic book for the year. I struggled a lot to get through the first story but was more engrossed by the second two!

[Al · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sebastian Faulks' triple biography, "The Fatal Englishman," is an engrossing read. By combining three short but incisive bios of three Englishmen from different areas (the arts, wartime aviation, journalism) and different decades of the 20th century, Faulks pulls off a difficult challenge. There are common themes running through the lives of these men; each died early after achieving some prominence in their fields. All three grew up with high expectations for success from teachers, family and friends--only to fail when they started self-destructive behaviors. Faulks primarily leaves these connections up to the reader, something that may disappoint some readers. But re-reading Faulks' foreword helps clarify his focus. Though the book may resonate more with British readers, the overriding theme of "peaking too soon" in life is universal to all cultures, as is the helplessness friends and family face when when a loved one's life takes a determined, downward spiral. Recommended.

[Denis · Rating 4 out of 5]

A riveting study of the English psyche through three mysterious and complex men, and the people that surrounded them. Written with compassion and style by Faulks, who brings his talent as a novelist to this original approach to biography. It's often quite moving, and the men he has chosen to analyze are fascinating characters. That everything is true makes this book even more interesting.

[George Siehl · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Catie]

Recommendation from Jennie (@foxedquarterly) - 11/30/2017

[Andrew Forrest · Rating 4 out of 5]

Three short lives, A painter in the 1920's, Christopher Wood, a ww2 spitfire pilot, Richard Hilary and Jeremy Wolfenden, described as the cleverest young man in England in the 1950's. A group biography superbly portrayed

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 1 out of 5]

I must acknowledge then when I read this book in 2016 I greatly enjoyed it and there is much good in it and in preparing to write a review in 2025 I took the book down from the shelf and started to read it again. That may have been a mistake because I quickly tired of the 'de haut en bas' worlds of the books three subjects the painter ,Christopher 'Kit' Woods; Battle of Britain pilot, Richard Hillary; and famous son, Jeremy Wolfenden (which is unkind but not really untrue). It is not like I am a horny handed son of the labouring classes nor can I deny a long dalliance amongst desperately trying to be seen as the 'jeunesse doree' and maybe it is just old age, but I find tales of the inability of beautiful English boys to successfully grow into adults deeply annoying; and I admit that for years the requirement of so many, often 'soi dissant', upper class English youths for someone to undress them and put them to bed when drunk or drugged, provided endless, happily seized on, opportunities. But even then I was never able to see these youths as representing anything more than the plight of the over advantaged to cope with reality. Even as a teenager, long before I was undressing and seducing boys like the 'Fatal Englishmen' of this book, I had read and dismissed as awful tripe the template for their whole story in Cyril Connolly's 'Enemies of Promise'.

I was also deeply annoyed by Mr. Faulkes in his introduction to 'The Fatal Englishman' using 'Remembering Denny' by Calvin Trilling as a touchstone of the search for unfulfilled promise. Mr. Trilling wrote about Denny Hansen who, when he graduated from Yale in 1958, was seen by many as personifying the American century and a potential future president. He didn't become president, never went into politics, but had a very successful career as an academic but committed suicide in his 50s probably due to problems with health and living with his homosexuality.

There is a huge difference between Denny Hansen, a middle aged man, and the deaths of Woods by suicide at 29, Hillary's at 23 in WWII and Wolfenden's at 31 from alcoholism. Also Mr. Trilling was really using Denny Hansen as a metaphor to look at all the promise that Americans of the time felt had been lost through Vietnam and Watergate. I am afraid that none of Mr. Faulkes subjects were ever a metaphor for a lost golden age.

I've been very negative about this book and it is entirely on a matter of personal taste or attitude that I find it lacking. I am sure many will enjoy it just as much as I did on my first reading. Sometimes the past should remain past because being a different country means it becomes strange as you move on. But really good books grow with you, they are timeless.

I cannot in fairness reward the book with less then four stars but I will dispose of my copy because I will never open it again.

[Colin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Fatal Englishman made a big impression on me when I first read it twenty or so years ago, and, finding it again in a second hand bookshop prompted me to read it once more. In just over 300 pages, Sebastian Faulks tells the brief life stories of three gilded but doomed young men. Christopher’Kit’ Wood was a talented painter who moved in the same Parisian circles as Picasso, Diaghilev and Jean Cocteau, but struggled with an opium addiction that eventually led to mental breakdown and suicide; Richard Hillary was a Second World War Spitfire pilot who suffered appalling burns when his plane was brought down, but was given a new face by the pioneering plastic surgeon A H McIndoe, before returning to flying and dying in a mysterious night flying accident at the age of just 23; Jeremy Wolfenden had the greatest mind of his generation at Oxford in the 1950s, but met an early death at the age of 31 after a career as Moscow correspondent of the Daily Telegraph and an increasingly terrifying involvement in Cold War espionage. Faulks tells their stories at a pace that matches the way they lived their lives and finds unexpected connections between these three young men who never met. The Fatal Englishman is a revealing, deeply compassionate triple biography, overshadowed by Faulks’s fictional output and less well known than it deserves to be.

[Roy · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting idea: to take the lives of three talented but flawed Englishmen, who all died young; to allow them the biography that they never had.

Although well written, and after exhaustive research, this book fails the first test of any biography: we have to know, or at least understand, who we are reading about and why they were so remarkable that someone has taken the trouble to write about them.

The difficulty that I had with this book was that I felt little sympathy for these men. I couldn’t see anything that was particularly “brilliant” about them, and, even if they were, these were lives that were frittered away through self-destructive behaviour.

I was left wondering why Faulks had chosen these three particular men and what he saw that was so noteworthy about them.

I had assumed that, when I reached the end, there would be a link between their stories or at least a message that we can take from their lives but, if there was, I’m afraid that I didn’t see it.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not sure about this one. I reached the end and thought “What was the point”? Did I miss it? Three young men who died in their youth, a painter, a war pilot, a spy/journalist/hedonist. Two were homosexual. All are now relatively unknown. I struggled to see further connections. Like I’ve thought before with Faulks, sometimes he writes with an urgency and style that makes the pages fly past, while at other times it’s all so turgid that you wonder how he could bear to sit and write it, never mind read it. Overall it was all so “slight” and, for me, lacked a certain depth. The characters were interesting but didn’t interest me, a bit like his writing.

[Marcus Bicknell]

I find this book inspirational, both for the three real life characters and for the dark mood and inevitability of their endings which Faulks communicates. A fascinating book.

Declaration of a special interest... on of the characters, WWII pilot Richard Hillary, knew my father Wing Commander Nigel Bicknell DSO DFC and mentions him on more than one occasion in his own biography THE LAST ENEMY.

[Geraldine O'Donnell · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Artur Nowrot · Rating 2 out of 5]

These are three stories about young Englishmen who start off very promising and then head for disaster (and death at a very young age). It's very sad, but I'm not sure what I'm supposed to take from that.

[Juan José · Rating 5 out of 5]

Three short lives, one great book!!

[Troy Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved it!

[Chakib Miraoui · Rating 4 out of 5]

i found these two biographies that i read to be a faithful and fair glimpse into two very remarkable men of the early period of the last century.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book tells the story of Christopher Wood (1901-1930), Richard Hillary (1919-1943), and Jeremy Wolfenden (1934-1965)—the fatal Englishmen, artist, fighter pilot and spy. I enjoyed the book but was not sure how to review it.

That provocative title led me to anticipate that Faulks would use the three lives to adduce an overarching or connecting theme related to the abbreviated lives of three Englishmen of the first half of the 20th century.

In a two-page Author’s Note at the beginning, Faulks writes: «  The book [Remembering Denny by Calvin Trillin] made me think that young or short lives are more sensitive indicators of the pressures of public attitudes » than longer lives. He continues, writing that the three lives taken together « might well seem full enough to take away the sense of ‘so what’ that would cling to a single short life. »

Having undersold his project, the author continues by saying, in effect, BUT IF they « actually had achieved something interesting and if they were to come from different parts of the century and so have lived against a different public background and thus illustrate the impact of changing attitudes and preoccupations over a long period... ». Yes, the dots are his. And, no, Faulks certainly does not spell out the impact of changing attitudes... It seemed a bizarre introduction and an act of misdirection.

What the book does well is tell the stories of the three men and those stories are gripping and poignant, they did achieve interesting things and lived through interesting times. Their lives no doubt do illustrate something or other of a social/historical nature, but Faulks let me down in that regard.

So I really liked this book and am glad to have learned about three people I had never heard of. Just don’t read the Author’s Note!!

[Angela Campbell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sebastian Faulks’ first attempt at non fiction takes the form of three essays each featuring the life of an Englishman of great promise. Sadly for the airman, the artist and the spy, their lives were cut short. Faulks tells engaging stories and they are far from being dry histories. The story of Richard Hillary the WW11 pilot, was of particular interest because of his relationship with McIndoe the plastic surgeon, (a New Zealander) after a horrific crash necessitating multiple surgeries. The RAF hero’s rehabilitation was incredibly difficult and the early development of plastic surgery is fascinating.

Unfortunately none of the three subjects are particularly appealing characters and although their stories are poignant, they do not have much charm.
This book was a slow burn for me, at times somewhat boring but there were moments particularly in the Hillary biography which rewarded persistence.

[Gordon Tyrrall · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up in a charity shop, but having read some of Sebastian Faulks' novels I knew it would be enjoyable reading. I wonder, as others have done, why he picked these three men. They are all from fairly privileged backgrounds, all marked out for greatness, and all largely forgotten now - although I have heard of the artist Christopher Wood. As Faulks paints them, none are particularly likeable, although they are not dull! They come across as conceited,selfish and arrogant, although they were loved by many who knew them personally - and especially doted on by their mothers! They were all convinced of their own greatness, and when it was thwarted they behaved like spoilt children. All three exhibit self-destructive tendencies. I feel th e three biographies give a certain unflattering insight into "Englishness" in different parts of the 20th century. All the same, a very "unputdownable" read!

[Carly · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have conflicting feelings about this book and found it incredibly frustrating at times. I didn't enjoy the first part about Christopher Wood, and nearly abandoned reading as the content was very dry.  It took me a month to read the first 100 pages.


The sections on Richard Hillary and Jeremy Wolfenden were far more engaging, and this may reflect the wider range of content Faulks was able to draw upon when researching these men.  I think Wolfenden’s story in particular benefited from Faulk’s interviews with his family and friends.  


I'd rate the three sections as 1.5 for Wood, 3.5 for Hillary, and 4 for Wolfenden.  A generous 3* overall because it took me 2.5 months to finish.

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

The pace was alittle slow for me and the writing quite dry and dispassionate so not complementary to a biography where you would might expect some sympathy with the subject. I felt that these young men had had alot of advantages in their lives and even though similarities were highlighted such as an large emotional attachment to their mother and an emotionally distant father, it was, for children of the upper middle classes at that time, to be held at arms length by a father as it was considered character building and taught one independence so, considered to be a normal upbringing.

[Stephen Clark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Trio of early deaths

Three young men in successive eras. Born in England, they engaged with the wider world via artistic ambition, war, journalism and espionage. Their lives cover a lot of ground, but there is a stultifying quality that oppressed them: a grim disapproval of homosexuality, difference of any kind that belong to the milieu they had the mis/fortune to be born into. A sobering and fascinating account of the drama of the times. I found many names I have since looked up, so it is also a starting point for further reading about lost lives.

[Catullus · Rating 4 out of 5]

The lives of three flawed and therefore 'fatal' men from the 20th century. Each story is told with a mixture of biography and investigative journalism. The three men are linked in various ways...explicitly via family and common acquaintances, and morally through their relationships, motivations and fa al flaws. This is a great evocation of recent history, intermingling art, religion, relationships, class, education and various other facets of English life.

[Madelaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A psychological history of a country, during the 20th Century, through the biographical sketches of its doomed youth. Fascinating biography, with the pacing of a thriller. War as the backdrop, alcohol as the lubricant, death as the end. Complex, while being effortless to read. Sebastian Faulks' does something quietly remarkable with The Fatal Englishman.