Resources

The little Oa is a tree root carried by Liku in The Inheritors.

Pincher Martin In Pincher Martin, Christopher Martin has been shipwrecked and is surviving on a rock, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. His time on […]

Pincher Martin Christopher Martin’s desire to defeat death forms the narrative of this whole novel, as he battles to survive. Early on, he declares ‘I […]

On the original manuscript of The Inheritors, Golding wrote that the ‘centre symbol is the waterfall, the time stream, the fall, the second law of thermodynamics’. […]

As many of Golding’s novels feature aspects of survival, hunger is a recurrent theme.

Lord of the Flies The island is the home of a number of animals, most notably pigs, who become the target of the boys’ hunts. Ralph, […]

The battle between civilisation and savagery is represented in a number of Golding’s novels, most famously in Lord of the Flies and The Inheritors.

In Free Fall, Sammy and his ‘Ma’ live on Rotten Row, ‘right in the heart of the Garden of England’; ‘a slum’ with a wooden […]

Music is a major theme in some of Golding’s novels, particularly The Pyramid, but it also plays a minor, but important role in others, including Pincher Martin […]

Religion is a theme in many of Golding’s novels, including The Inheritors, The Spire and Darkness Visible.

Pincher Martin was adapted into a stunning opera by Oliver Rudland in 2014. Staged at the Royal College of Music, London, the opera combined music with […]

Golding’s biographer, John Carey, writes that Savernake Forest, on the outskirts of Marlborough,Wiltshire, was the inspiration for the setting of The Inheritors. Golding’s parents would take him […]