Sebastian Faulks – Keynote Speaker

Sebastian Faulks CBE is widely hailed as one of the best writers of his generation. He has written several bestselling novels, including Birdsong which sold 2 million copies and was identified as one of Britain’s best loved novels, and has reinvented himself novel by novel.

He is an inspiring speaker who can discuss his own creative process, and how his own extensive research and imagination are harnessed to create novels which are ambitious and original.

Sebastian worked in journalism before starting to write books. He was the first Literary Editor of the Independent and became 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. He wrote and presented the Channel 4 Television series Churchill’s Secret Army, screened in 1999 and presented a major four-part BBC 2 series celebrating the British novel and its characters, Faulks on Fiction.

He is well-known for his French trilogy, The Girl at the Lion d’Or, Birdsong and Charlotte Gray, and the latter was made into a film starring Cate Blanchett in 2001. He is the author of a biography, The Fatal Englishman; a small book of literary parodies, Pistache (2010); and the novels Engleby (2008) and A Week in December (2009), which was a number one bestseller. He also wrote the James Bond thriller Devil May Care (2008) in the style of Ian Fleming. His most recent book A Possible Life, was published in 2012.

Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1993, he was also appointed CBE for services to literature in 2002. For his novel Human Traces (2011), he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the The Tavistock Clinic in association with the University of East London for his contribution to the understanding of psychiatry. He was elected an Honorary Fellow at Emmanual College, Cambridge in 2007.