The Fatal Englishman: Three Short Lives
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Yellowed
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
What does it mean to burn brilliantly and briefly — to possess extraordinary gifts and yet be consumed by them before their full flowering? The Fatal Englishman: Three Short Lives by Sebastian Faulks presents an intimate and penetrating triple biography of three remarkable Englishmen — painter Christopher Wood, fighter pilot Richard Hillary, and writer Jeremy Wolfenden — each of whom died tragically young, yet left an indelible mark on the cultural and historical landscape of the twentieth century. Faulks chronicles their meteoric lives with the precision of a historian and the sensitivity of a novelist, unearthing the fierce ambitions, private torments, and social pressures that shaped each man's destiny. Set against the vivid backdrops of bohemian Paris, the Battle of Britain, and Cold War Moscow, the book illustrates how talent, vulnerability, and the peculiar burdens of English identity can forge both greatness and self-destruction. Faulks, best known for his acclaimed novel Birdsong, brings his signature narrative elegance to non-fiction, demonstrating that biography, at its finest, is as gripping as any novel. He argues implicitly that these three lives — disparate in their pursuits yet united in their fatal intensity — reveal something essential and contradictory about the English national character: its romanticism, its repression, and its strange romance with failure. Richly researched and beautifully written, this work stands as a testament to the power of lives unlived in full — leaving the reader to wonder what masterpieces, victories, and revelations the world was denied.
Author: Sebastian Faulks
Format: Paperback
Genre: Biography
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Yellowed
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
What does it mean to burn brilliantly and briefly — to possess extraordinary gifts and yet be consumed by them before their full flowering? The Fatal Englishman: Three Short Lives by Sebastian Faulks presents an intimate and penetrating triple biography of three remarkable Englishmen — painter Christopher Wood, fighter pilot Richard Hillary, and writer Jeremy Wolfenden — each of whom died tragically young, yet left an indelible mark on the cultural and historical landscape of the twentieth century. Faulks chronicles their meteoric lives with the precision of a historian and the sensitivity of a novelist, unearthing the fierce ambitions, private torments, and social pressures that shaped each man's destiny. Set against the vivid backdrops of bohemian Paris, the Battle of Britain, and Cold War Moscow, the book illustrates how talent, vulnerability, and the peculiar burdens of English identity can forge both greatness and self-destruction. Faulks, best known for his acclaimed novel Birdsong, brings his signature narrative elegance to non-fiction, demonstrating that biography, at its finest, is as gripping as any novel. He argues implicitly that these three lives — disparate in their pursuits yet united in their fatal intensity — reveal something essential and contradictory about the English national character: its romanticism, its repression, and its strange romance with failure. Richly researched and beautifully written, this work stands as a testament to the power of lives unlived in full — leaving the reader to wonder what masterpieces, victories, and revelations the world was denied.