The Golding Speaker: Sebastian Faulks

Marlborough LitFest hosts an annual Golding Speaker to highlight the towns long connection with the Nobel Laureate and Booker Prize winner, William Golding, at an event sponsored by William Golding Limited.Sebastian Faulks, this years Golding Speaker, needs little introduction.

The bestselling author of more than 20 books, including Birdsong, Charlotte Gray and Engleby, he is one of Britains most successful writers.In Farewell to Eden, his new novel, Faulks tells the story of Philip Deval, a soldier who arrives in Palestine on a peace-keeping mission in the final days of the British Mandate.

Years later, we find Philip teaching at a school in the English countryside, where he meets an enigmatic music mistress.

They grow close, but Philip is a changed man.

He must confront the secrets and scars of all he has lived through which threaten to upend his future.Billed as a sweeping and profound novel about faith in all its forms, Farewell to Eden paints a rich portrait of an embattled postwar Britain and asks the question: How, after great suffering, do we retain our humanity and learn to love again?Faulks was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1993 and appointed CBE for services to literature in 2002.Sebastian Faulks will be in conversation with writer and interviewer Rebecca Fletcher.