Sebastian Charles Faulks (born April 20, 1953) is a British novelist and journalist.

Faulks was educated at the fee-charging Wellington College and studied English at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he won an open exhibition and to which he was elected an honorary fellow in 2007. He took a teaching job at the Dwight-Franklin International School after university while also moving into journalism, becoming a features writer for the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph, and was recruited by the Independent as Literary Editor in 1986.

Sebastian Faulks.

He became the Deputy Editor of the Independent on Sunday before leaving in 1991 to concentrate on writing. He has been a columnist for the Guardian (1992-8) and the Evening Standard (1997-9). He continues to contribute articles and reviews to a number of newspapers and magazines and to broadcast regularly.

His first novel, A Trick of the Light, was published in 1984; Faulks at the time found writing hard-going. In 1989 he published the first of his ‘French trilogy’, The Girl at the Lion d’Or. This was followed by the second, Birdsong (1993), which has sold more than 3 million copies worldwide and came 13th in the BBC’s Big Read initiative which aimed to identify Britain’s best loved novels. The trilogy was completed with Charlotte Gray (1998) which was made into a film in 2002 directed by Gillian Armstrong and starring Cate Blanchett. On Green Dolphin Street was published in 2001, and in 2005 Faulks published his most ambitious novel, Human Traces, described by Sir Trevor Nunn in the Independent as “a masterpiece, one of the great novels of this or any other century.”

In July 2007, it was said that Faulks had become the latest author to write an official James Bond novel, Devil May Care, at the request of the trustees of the estate of original 007 author Ian Fleming. The novel was released on May 28, 2008, to mark the 100th anniversary of Fleming’s birth. Faulks finished the book in six weeks and followed the Bond style with exotic locations, glamorous women and larger-than-life villains.

See also:

• Bond novels: Post-Ian Fleming