Winner of Galaxy British Book Awards: Sainsbury's Popular Fiction Award 2009.

That a literary novelist of Faulks's calibre should take on Fleming's mantle is a fitting tribute to one of Britain's greatest thriller writers. The Times

Sebastian Faulks was born in April 1953. Before becoming a full-time writer in 1991, he worked as a journalist. His French trilogy -- The Girl at the Lion d'Or, Birdsong and Charlotte Gray (1989-1997) -- established him in the front rank of British novelists. UK sales of Birdsong exceed 2,500,000 copies, and for this novel he was named "Author of the Year" by the British Book Awards in 1995. It is regularly voted one of the nation's favourite books. Charlotte Gray has also sold over a million copies and was filmed with Cate Blanchett in the main part. Faulks's other novels include A Fool's Alphabet (1992), On Green Dolphin Street(2001), the epic Human Traces (2005), and most recently Engleby (2007). His biographical study of three doomed young men of the 20th century, The Fatal Englishman, was published in 1996 and a book of literary parodies, Pistache, in 2006. Sebastian Faulks lives in London with his wife and their three children.