Product Description

Christopher Wood, a beautiful young Englishman, decided to be the greatest painter the world had seen. He went to Paris in 1921. By day he studied, by night he attended the parties of the beau monde. He knew Picasso, worked for Diaghilev and was a friend of Cocteau. In the last months of his 29-year life, he fought a ravening opium addiction to succeed in claiming a place in history of English painting. Richard Hilary, confident, handsome and unprincipled, flew Spitfires in the Battle of Britain before being shot down and horribly burned. He underwent several operations by the legendary plastic surgeon, A H McIndoe. His account of his experiences, "The Last Enemy", made him famous, but not happy. He begged to be allowed to return to flying, and died mysteriously in a night training operation, aged 23. Jeremy Wolfenden was born in 1936, the son of Jack, later Lord Wolfenden. Charming, generous and witty, he was the cleverest Englishman of his generation, but left All Souls to become a hack reporter. At the height of the Cold War, he was sent to Moscow where his louche private life made him the plaything of the intelligence services. A terrifying sequence of events ended in Washington where he died at the age of 31.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #39775 in Books
• Published on: 1997-01-30
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Review
"Compelling and stunningly written." -"The Times" (London)
"Faulks is a prodigiously talented writer." -T"he New York Times"
"You may not have heard of the subjects of these three essays, but please do not let that hinder you. . . . [Faulks's] spare narrative hides a commitment to his subjects which pulls you in and leaves you gasping for these lost lives." -"Mail on Sunday"
"Flawless. . . . Poetic. . . . Superbly portrayed. . . . [Faulks's] feat of imagination . . . is phenomenal." -"Daily Telegraph"

From the Publisher
'Wildly exciting..it's a classic' David Hare

About the Author
Sebastian Faulks worked as a journalist for 14 years before taking up writing books full time in 1991. He is the author of A Trick of Light, The Girl at the Lion D'Or, A Fool's Alphabet, The Fatal Englishman, Birdsong, Charlotte Gray, On Green Dolphin Street and most recently Human Traces.

Customer Reviews

Dragons on their shoulders
I picked up Three fatal Englishmen after my first Sebastian Faulks encounter, which was Birdsong.

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
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.

The intriguing stories of three forgotten prodigies
Three biographical sketches of talented Englishmen who met early demises aided by (respectively)opium, foolhardiness, and alcohol, and (in all three cases) cultural/generational mythologies. Faulks is a thoughtful biographer, and his narrative style, despite some redundancies, hooks the reader for the duration. What surprised me is that his other books appear to be slushy romantic novels, albeit well-written ones. Even if you pass on them (as I did), this book is well worth reading and a good deal more hard-headed and analytical than his other titles might suggest. (One caveat: everyone who glances at the title seems to think Shelley, Keats, etc., a mistake facilitated by the cover of the imported paperback I read. The fault seems to have been remedied in part by a new cover on the latest edition.)