Fires Which Burned Brightly

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.

'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