• Award-winning author Sebastian Faulks about the fundamentals in writing historical novels 

Nobody writes a historical novel like he does. Sebastian Charles Faulks is a bona fide genius of literature and he was a highlight at the Galle Literary Festival this year (2024). He is the author of ‘The Girl at the Lion d’Or’, ‘Birdsong’ and ‘Charlotte Gray’ to name a few, and his most recent title is ‘The Seventh Son’. He was commissioned by the British writer Ian Lancaster Fleming’s estate in 2006 to write a ‘James Bond’ continuation to commemorate the author’s birth centenary. This resulted in ‘Devil May Care’. He also wrote a continuation of the British writer Pelham Grenville Wodehouse’s ‘Jeeves’ series – ‘Jeeves and the Wedding Bells’. 

Faulks was at one point a journalist and worked at The Independent, The Daily Telegraph, and The Sunday Telegraph. He is also a regular on ‘The Write Stuff’ literary quiz on the British Broadcasting Corporation Radio 4.

He has been to Sri Lanka several times already, first in 1981 as a long-time cricket fan. A literary superstar elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL) in 1993 and appointed a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 2002, he has been conferred two honourary doctorates and won multiple awards including the British Book Awards’ ‘Author of the Year’. His book ‘Charlotte Gray’ was adapted into a film starring the Australian Catherine Elise Blanchett, while ‘Birdsong’ was adapted for the stage and performed at The Comedy Theatre in Australia.

He was on ‘Kaleidoscope’ this week. 

Following are the excerpts from the interview:

How has our Island been treating you this time?

I have come here from India, which has lovely people but terrible traffic, so, to be in a place with open air and where traffic moves is a joy.

You were first here in 1981 to play cricket; how has Sri Lanka changed since then?

Between 1981 and now, obviously, the country has been through extremely turbulent and difficult times. Down here in Galle however, the world seems completely unchanged. The boats, the sea, the fish, the people, and the lovely weather, it’s all very much the Sri Lanka that I remember.

You are a prolific writer. How did cricket transcend into writing? 

Well, I was never a professional cricketer. I was only an amateur club cricketer and it’s a game which meant a great deal to me as a child. It is the most intellectual and physical game – it’s the physical equivalent of chess, really. To me, it has been a way of contemplating the shortness of life and the unfairness of life, the brevity of life. Cricket has also been a way of examining characters. Above all, it’s been a source of enormous friendship and humour. When you come to the other side of the world, to India or Sri Lanka, you find that you have in common with people something that you might not otherwise have in common, and that’s a great feeling. The only problem we had with coming to India or Sri Lanka was that the home players were very good, so we never seemed to win any game.

So, what did you have to keep in mind when writing the continuations for both the ‘James Bond’ as well as the ‘Jeeves’ series? 

The ‘James Bond’ book was a very surprising commission because I don’t write thrillers and I don’t read thrillers, so I was very surprised to be asked. I spoke to the Fleming family quite a lot and they were very encouraging, so I said that I’d write an outline and see what they think. We went through it together where I would do a little chapter and show it to them. The big challenge of that was to create a complicated plot because my own books don’t have much of a plot as they’re more about people’s lives as they change and as they get older. There are no guns, villains, double-crossing and car chases, so all that world was completely unfamiliar to me. To make a complicated thriller plot was harder than it looked. The challenge with the Wodehouse book had more to do with the style. Fleming’s style is not very hard to imitate, but, Wodehouse’s style is very hard to imitate because it is so fragile, light, and complicated. Just because it’s a comic about a ridiculous world that never existed doesn’t mean to say it’s easy. That was a different challenge, to hear the music in my voice and head, and to reproduce his rhythms, his way.

When you write historical novels, what are the fundamentals that you keep in mind when you start?

I don’t really think that there’s a difference between a novel set in the past and a novel set in the future. My most recent novel, ‘The Seventh Son’ begins in 2030 and it ends in 2055, so it’s set mostly in the 2040s, whereas if you look at a book like ‘Charlotte Gray’, it’s from the 1940s. But to me, they’re both just novels. When you think about a novel written in the past, you can do as much research as you’d like to build your world for the background. However, if you do too much, you end up writing a sort of formal essay, shoving in everything you’ve discovered. You have to remember that it’s about people, their lives, and it’s about drama. With the future, there’s no research to do because nobody knows what it’s going to be like. In a way, it’s much easier. They are all just fiction novels.

Has the market changed for novels? 

Yes, it has. When I first started writing in the early 1980s, there was very little market for the kind of book that I was writing, which was quite a serious literary book. All successful British authors of that time had other jobs, or their husbands or wives had other jobs. Then, between about 1985 and 2005, there was a huge boom in serious yet readable books, which was largely to do with the way that they were sold. They were piled high and sold even out of supermarkets. It was a fantastic time to be a writer.  Now, that has changed again but the volume of books has remained. The volume of books is now clustered around very few books which have a lot to do with people who were or are famous because of the Internet or the television. 

What do you think of electronic books? Will they eventually replace the much-loved paper-based book?

It doesn’t seem so. They seem to sit alongside quite well. I mean, I don’t use e-books much, unless I’m travelling somewhere. People’s predictions of all these things are wrong. People have said that hardbacks would disappear and that the paperback would be popular, but, in the United States, it’s the paperback that has disappeared. It is impossible to predict, but it seems to me that at the moment, e-books sit quite happily alongside paper-based books.

Does your approach to writing change from book to book? 

Every time you sit down to write a new book, you feel like a beginner, a newbie. Sometimes, I go back to the shelf, take out an earlier book, and I look at it again; that’s good. Or, I might turn to another page and write another page. You never seem to start. It becomes ridiculously awkward. What helps you with every book is finding the tone of voice for that book, whether it’s from the first person or the third person, what period it’s set in and so on. Once you’ve found that tone, you’re all done.

Have you ever had plots going wrong, or things going wrong while you were writing?

Not since the early days. Before I was published, I wrote two or three books which I gave up halfway through. I didn’t know where they were going. But, writing a novel, a serious novel of 300 pages, is a big effort; intellectually, emotionally, and always physically. It is a lot of research. It takes a lot of commitment. Having said that, it does change a bit from time to time. Every book is different, but, I wouldn’t really get beyond 10,000 words unless I was really certain that I knew what I was doing.

Your latest book has been described as “near future”. Any insights about life and the time you learned through your writing in that book?

Time is the great topic, the great theme, really. If you think of the greatest novel in Europe in the last Century (20th), it’s actually ‘In Search of Lost Time/Remembrance of Things Past’ by the Frenchman Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust. What makes a lot of stories moving or poignant is the sense that the characters have only one chance and that they need to make the right choices, to find the right people to be with. But, time will not matter at all in the end. And of course, as you get older, time begins to accelerate. It is something that’s very hard to explain to a young person. I remember as a child, between the ages of six and seven, it felt like it took about 20 years in that year, but the age between 61 and 62 took about five minutes.

If you were to pick your favourite novel, what would it be?

I would probably say ‘Human Traces’ because it was the longest and most serious. It took every emotion out of me. ‘Birdsong’ is my most famous book. Some people think of it like a millstone around my neck, but I don’t think of it like that. I think that it’s like the locomotive that pulls the train, so I’m happy with that. I also think that everyone will like my newest book ‘The Seventh Son’.

What is your favourite thing about Sri Lanka?

I think the landscape, the people, and the food is amazing. I also have some great memories here. Colombo was the first City in Asia that I’d ever been to. I remember staying in a very rundown little hotel on Galle Road but from the moment I arrived, everything felt so different. And that’s why it was so exciting. 

(The writer is the host, director, and co-producer of the weekly digital programme ‘Kaleidoscope with Savithri Rodrigo’ which can be viewed on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. She has over three decades of experience in print, electronic, and social media)