He is best known for his historical novels set in France – The Girl at the Lion d'Or, Birdsong and Charlotte Gray.

[5] After graduating, Faulks worked as a teacher at a private school in Camden Town, and then as a journalist for the Daily and Sunday Telegraph.

[6] He became deputy editor of the Independent on Sunday in 1989; in the same year he published The Girl at the Lion d'Or, the first of his historical novels set in France.

Faulks can catch, and caricature, another writers' fingerprints and foibles with a delicious precision that only a deep love of writing can teach.

[14] In August 2014, Faulks was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian opposing Scottish independence in the run-up to September's referendum on that issue.

[6] In April 2003 Birdsong came 13th in the BBC's Big Read initiative which aimed to identify Britain's best loved novels.

[19] The Daily Telegraph said the book was "distinguished by a remarkable intellectual energy: a narrative verve, technical mastery of the possibilities of the novel form and vivid sense of the tragic contingency of human life.

"[20] To mark the 2008 centenary of Ian Fleming's birth, the author's estate in 2006 commissioned Faulks to write a new James Bond novel.

While publicising the book, Faulks received some criticism for negative remarks he made about the Koran; he was quick to offer "a simple but unqualified apology to my Muslim friends and readers for anything that has come out sounding crude or intolerant.

Tibor Fischer, in the Daily Telegraph, praised the novel's "comic élan", but felt it was "uneven" and criticised the character of John Veals as "lifeless".

[25] Mark Lawson wrote in The Guardian, "an honest critic must surely conclude that Faulks has correctly identified the novel that needs to be written about these times, but may also have proved that British society is now so various that no single writer can capture all its aspects.

However, in honourably failing to depict the entire state of the nation, Faulks has memorably skewered the British literary world.

Despite some reservations, Melissa Katsoulis praised the book in The Times and stated that there are "some high ideas at work here and, as with the best dystopian fictions, all the crazy future science stuff feels scary precisely because it’s close to happening already.

"[27] In 2001 Charlotte Gray was made into a film starring Cate Blanchett and directed by Gillian Armstrong.

In 2012, Birdsong was made into a two-part BBC TV serial, written by Abi Morgan, directed by Philip Martin and starring Eddie Redmayne.