About
William Golding

William Golding is born in Newquay, Cornwall, in his grandmother’s house. Together with his parents Alec and Mildred Golding and his older brother, Jose, his home is in Marlborough, Wiltshire, where his father Alec is science master at the local grammar school.

Golding and his family move into 29 The Green, Marlborough, Wiltshire. It remains the home of Golding’s parents for the rest of their lives. As a child Golding is terrified by the house’s cellars and the adjacent graveyard next to the church. Alec Golding drew this picture of the house in 1945.

Golding goes to Brasenose College, Oxford, to read science. He is the only grammar-school boy in the entire college.

Golding gives up studying science. He later admits the choice of science had been undertaken to please his father. He changes to English and completes the course in two years, gaining a good second-class degree in 1934.

Golding’s only collection of poetry, entitled Poems, is published by Macmillan. This is his first published book.

Golding becomes a teacher at a Steiner school in south London, having failed to become an actor or make a living through music.

Golding takes a post teaching at Maidstone Grammar school for boys. He joins in the musical life of the school and co-produces Julius Caesar.

In September Golding marries Ann Brookfield in Maidstone, Kent. Ann becomes his most important critic and supporter throughout his lifetime.

Ann gives birth to David, their first child.

Golding joins the Navy as an ordinary seaman following the outbreak of World War II. By 1942, he is an officer and is later involved in the D-Day landings and the Battle of Walcheren. He also spends a year in a weapons research establishment known as M.D. 1.

Judy Golding is born. Judy is the author of a memoir about her father, The Children of Lovers.

Golding returns to his teaching job at Bishop Wordsworth’s School in Salisbury. His profession gives him an insight into the behaviour of school children. This is reflected in many of his novels.

Golding completes an early version of Lord of the Flies and begins to send it out to publishers. He faces numerous rejections until Charles Monteith, a new editor at Faber, takes an interest in September1953. The first version is lost, but the manuscript survives.

In September Golding’s debut novel, Lord of the Flies, is published by Faber and Faber. It is dedicated to his mother and father. The book receives good reviews and decent sales.

The Inheritors, Golding’s favourite of all his books, is published, and dedicated to Ann. The most poetic of Golding’s novels, it is an elegiac narrative of an encounter between a family of Neanderthals – gentle and trusting — and a group of Homo sapiens, who are infinitely better equipped to survive, and so to inherit.

Faber and Faber publish Pincher Martin. Ostensibly a novel of survival at sea, it is a profound exploration of the individual will, determined to survive against all odds.

Golding’s father Alec dies in December. Golding himself described this loss as ‘like the side of a cliff falling away’. He later acknowledged that he had wept more tears over Alec than over anyone else.

Golding’s fourth novel, Free Fall, is published. The book is heavily influenced by his experience in World War II. It also contains a portrait of his father, including a description of his last days in hospital. The novel was first written in linear form, but Golding later re-organises it, so that the narrative moves back and forth in time. In it Golding explores the concept of individual freedom and the existence of two worlds: the material and the spiritual. Golding’s own schooldays at Marlborough Grammar School are used to illustrate this divide.

Golding is invited to be writer in residence at Hollins College, a women’s college in Virginia, USA. He and Ann leave the UK in September, returning the following July. Lewis Thompson, resident artist at Hollins, does a brilliant portrait of Golding (pictured). Following the success of his writing career, Golding is confident enough to resign his teaching job. In the US, Lord of the Flies is becoming hugely popular, particularly with young people, and Golding is invited to give many lectures at American universities.

Peter Brook’s film adaptation of Lord of the Flies is released. It is considered a masterpiece and Golding is astonished by the film.

Publication of The Spire, dedicated to Golding’s daughter Judy. The novel was inspired by Salisbury Cathedral, a building that fascinated Golding. Set in the fourteenth century, it describes the process whereby an individual, convinced that God has chosen him for an impossible task, ruthlessly enables the building of a spire on a cathedral – a building which may or may not have foundations. Golding believed the novel was one of his best. However, it was savaged by some critics, resulting in Golding losing confidence.

Publication of The Pyramid, dedicated to Golding’s son David. The book is loosely based on some of Golding’s experiences in Marlborough, Wiltshire, where he himself grew up, and David spent much of his first five years. The book is candid about the mistakes and cruelties individuals commit, and many of these are probably autobiographical. It also brings Golding’s love of music to the fore, nevertheless showing that this too can be distorted and ruined by human cruelty and desire for power.

The Scorpion God, a collection of three novellas, is published. The stories have very different settings, portraying a matriarchal society in prehistory, a highly evolved society in Ancient Egypt, and finally a story set in Imperial Rome.

This period marks a time of crisis for Golding. He is affected by writer’s block and suffers periods of ill health, as well as drinking heavily. He begins writing his unpublished journals in October 1971, beginning it as a dream journal. Some months after starting, he writes an explanatory essay entitled ‘History of a Crisis’.

Darkness Visible is published. Golding always refuses to discuss this novel in public. It is awarded the James Tait Black Prize.

Faber publishes Golding’s Rites of Passage, the first instalment in The Sea Trilogy. The book is hugely popular and introduces Golding as a darkly funny writer. Ostensibly the novel is the diary of a young man from an aristocratic family, sailing to Australia with a shipload of very diverse characters. Golding is awarded the Booker Prize for Rites of Passage. In his report on the prize, W L Webb of the Guardian calls Golding the ‘Lord of the novel’ and opines that Rites of Passage shows him at the ‘height of his powers’.

Golding is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, with the presentation made by King Carl XVI Gustav, who tells Golding he had to do Lord of the Flies at school. His Nobel lecture is included in a new, paperback edition of his second essay collection, A Moving Target (1984).

The Paper Men is published. This book reflects some of the feelings Golding had towards his reviewers and critics. A first-person narrator, a novelist who drinks too much and is filled with self-loathing, is pursued by a young would-be biographer, in a struggle that threatens them both.

Golding and his wife Ann leave their house in Bowerchalke, Wiltshire, where they had lived since 1958 (and briefly in 1940). They move to a beautiful Georgian house in Cornwall called Tullimaar (pictured). The house is surrounded by wonderful gardens. They enjoy the place enormously and spend some intensely happy years there.

Close Quarters, the second instalment of The Sea Trilogy, is published. In it the hero falls in love, and Golding admitted that Marion Chumley, the young woman in question, was in part based on his wife Ann, pictured here in 1937.

In the summer of this year William Golding is knighted by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace.

Fire Down Below, the final part of The Sea Trilogy is published, the last of Golding’s novels released in his lifetime. It brings the hero to Australia and to a good future. But an enigmatic dream shows that he has been affected and changed by the voyage, and by his companions.

William Golding dies of heart failure at his home in Cornwall and is buried in the churchyard at Bowerchalke, Wiltshire.

At a memorial service in November 1993, held in Salisbury Cathedral (pictured), Ted Hughes reads unforgettably from The Inheritors.

On New Year’s Day, Golding’s widow Ann dies. In May his longtime editor Charles Monteith dies. On 19 June, the second anniversary of Golding’s death, his final novel, The Double Tongue, is published posthumously, and is dedicated by the Golding family to Charles.