The many selves of Sebastian

Sebastian Faulks' two new novels are poles apart - an introspective character study and the further adventures of James Bond.

Here, he talks to Geraldine Bedell about identity, hearing voices and adjusting to the pace of 007's world. Published Sunday March 16, 2008 in The Observer

Sebastian Faulks has a hangover. It was his wife's birthday yesterday and he drank too much wine at dinner. He apologises for being inarticulate but, in fact, he speaks in perfectly formed sentences, mainly about the nature of existence.
He has always been clever: he managed to take his O-levels in only his second term at Wellington College, at the age of 13, then quickly polished off his A-levels, leaving him with more than a year of school with nothing to do but be tutored individually for Cambridge. His cleverness is, however, of a very English kind: understated and not show-offy. His novels don't parade themselves; they might be concerned with the nature of the self, with madness, with the place of the individual in some wider scheme of things, but they are also rattling yarns, character-driven, straightforwardly written, with a healthy respect for storytelling.

Faulks has curly blondish hair, which contributes to a cherubic, ageless appearance. At 54, he is tall and fit. He speaks in the well-modulated tones of one who was educated with an expectation of having a place in the world. We meet at a chi-chi cafe in Notting Hill, west London, near where he lives with his wife Veronica and their three teenage children, and close to his office in a
top-floor flat where 'on the rare occasions I have visitors, I have to throw
the keys down out of the window'. The two latest novels to emerge from this
eyrie are about to be published - the paperback of Engleby at the end of the
month, and his James Bond novel in May.

The full interview from The Observer