# Fires Which Burned Brightly

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- Book: [Fires Which Burned Brightly](https://www.bookquiver.com/sebastian-faulks/fires-which-burned-brightly) ([Fires Which Burned Brightly.md](https://www.bookquiver.com/sebastian-faulks/fires-which-burned-brightly.md))
- Authors: [Sebastian Faulks](https://www.bookquiver.com/sebastian-faulks)
- Publisher: Penguin
- Medium: audio
- Length: 8 h 30 min
- Narrated by: Sebastian Faulks
- ISBN: 978-18-0495-503-1
- Published: 2025-09-02
- Language: en_GB
- Binding: Audiobook · 8 h 30 min

## Description

Brought to you by Penguin. ‘The only dividend of the years’ vanishing, as far as I can see, is that it makes aspects of the past appear more interesting or humorous than they felt at the time.’ In Fires Which Burned Brightly , Faulks, a reluctant memoirist, offers readers a series of detailed snapshots from a life in progress. They include a post-war rural childhood – ‘cold mutton and wet washing on a rack over the range’ – the booze-sodden heyday of Fleet Street and a career as one of the country’s most acclaimed novelists. There are not one, but two daring escapes from boarding school; the delirium of a jetlagged American book tour; the writing of Birdsong in his brother’s house in 1992; and memorable trips across the channel to France. Politics, psychiatry and frustrated ventures into the world of entertainment are analysed with patience and rueful humour. The book is driven by a desire ‘to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.’ It ends with a tribute to Faulks’s parents and a sense of how his own generation was shaped by the disruptive power of war and its aftermath. Sharply perceptive and alive with a generous wit, Fires Which Burned Brightly is a work of subtle yet profound intelligence and warmth. © Sebastian Faulks 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025