Golding’s favourite tree

The tree was in the garden of his Cornish home, Tullimaar, and it was possibly around 200 years old. Golding wrote about the tree in his journals, in May 1985, not long after he moved in:

‘This evening we have wandered in the wilderness on the south side looking for seedlings of the fern-leaved beech but not finding any we didn’t know before.’

Golding’s love of nature is well-documented and trees are an important symbol in many of his books. This is perhaps especially true in Lord of the Flies and as you can see in this article, he particularly enjoyed writing about the island’s landscape. In 1988, he wrote in his journals:

‘We may, however, have a nightingale which sings in the predawn on the south side of the house and probably to make it all sound posher, in the fern-leaved beech.’

This is the tree after the storm, with the house in the background. Fern-leaved beeches are unlikely to propagate from seed. While Golding would have been really sad to see the tree now, his daughter Judy hopes that cuttings taken from the remains of the tree will spring into life. As ever, there is hope in nature.