A review by siria
The Fatal Englishman: Three Short Lives by Sebastian Faulks
4.0
The Fatal Englishman is an unusual kind of biography. It traces the lives of three Englishmen - Christopher Wood, Richard Hillary and Jeremy Wolfenden - who shared no connection with one another other than their talent, their ambition, their arrogance, and their early and tragic deaths. Christopher 'Kit' Wood was a painter who moved in some up of the upper echelons of English and French bohemian society in the 1920s; Richard Hillary a fighter pilot in the RAF in the Battle of Britain, who wrote a book chronicling his short life and the horrific injuries which he received when his plane crashed; Jeremy Wolfenden was an outstandingly intelligent journalist, spy and alcoholic in the 1950s and 60s.
Most people will never have heard of these three men before they read this book; I certainly hadn't. Their lives were brief, and their legacies not to the forefront of contemporary culture. Wood was a minor artist; Hillary left only one slim volume of memoirs; Wolfenden's work as a journalist was ephemeral and is now mostly lost. However, Faulks uses their lives as a subtle way of exploring the evolution of English society over the course of the twentieth century, from the birth of Wood in 1901 to the death of Wolfenden in 1965. Wood is an example of the attitudes of the English towards the continent, towards art and culture after the tragedy of the Great War; Hillary, the attitudes and the tragedies experienced and felt by the British during the Battle of Britain; Wolfenden, the intricacies and double-play of the Cold War, and the perilous position held by gay men before the legalisation of homosexuality.
The writing throughout is excellent; and for the most part, Faulks resists the temptation of novelist-turned-biographer to embellish his work with fictional flourishes. The research is impeccable, and his knowledge of the periods in question is always displayed without showiness. For the most part, I agreed with his conclusions on the characters of those he was writing about, and about the periods in question (though I did have one or two little 'huh?' moments when he stated things like the fact that Kit Wood's mother didn't have to worry about him converting to Catholicism because he was attracted by the aesthetic, not the spiritual side; when really, that has seemed to me to be one of the primary motivations for Anglo-Catholic conversions in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. but that's another discussion entirely, I suppose). An excellent book, that fascinates and saddens with thoughts of what-might-have-been in equal measure.
Most people will never have heard of these three men before they read this book; I certainly hadn't. Their lives were brief, and their legacies not to the forefront of contemporary culture. Wood was a minor artist; Hillary left only one slim volume of memoirs; Wolfenden's work as a journalist was ephemeral and is now mostly lost. However, Faulks uses their lives as a subtle way of exploring the evolution of English society over the course of the twentieth century, from the birth of Wood in 1901 to the death of Wolfenden in 1965. Wood is an example of the attitudes of the English towards the continent, towards art and culture after the tragedy of the Great War; Hillary, the attitudes and the tragedies experienced and felt by the British during the Battle of Britain; Wolfenden, the intricacies and double-play of the Cold War, and the perilous position held by gay men before the legalisation of homosexuality.
The writing throughout is excellent; and for the most part, Faulks resists the temptation of novelist-turned-biographer to embellish his work with fictional flourishes. The research is impeccable, and his knowledge of the periods in question is always displayed without showiness. For the most part, I agreed with his conclusions on the characters of those he was writing about, and about the periods in question (though I did have one or two little 'huh?' moments when he stated things like the fact that Kit Wood's mother didn't have to worry about him converting to Catholicism because he was attracted by the aesthetic, not the spiritual side; when really, that has seemed to me to be one of the primary motivations for Anglo-Catholic conversions in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. but that's another discussion entirely, I suppose). An excellent book, that fascinates and saddens with thoughts of what-might-have-been in equal measure.