Resources

This film introduces Golding’s 1964 novel The Spire.

In Free Fall, Sammy Mountjoy meets Taffy at a meeting for the Communist Party in the late 1930s. Despite being engaged to Beatrice Ifor, Sammy is […]

Golding visited Australia in 1975, and he was fascinated by the country, describing it as a place of ‘clear light and clean emptiness’. He was […]

Marion Chumley appears in both Close Quarters and Fire Down Below, the second and third parts of ‘The Sea Trilogy’. Chumley is a passenger on […]

The theme of social class, and its effects, appears in many of Golding’s novels, including ‘The Sea Trilogy’ and Lord of the Flies.

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 […]

Nick Shales appears in the final part of Free Fall in a memory from the protagonist Sammy Mountjoy. According to Sammy, Shales was ‘the best teacher I […]

Rachel is the wife of Roger Mason, the master builder, The Spire. Dean Jocelin compares her unfavourably to Goody Pangall and thinks of her as […]

In The Spire, Pangall and his wife Goody live within the walls of the Cathedral in a cottage – Pangall’s Kingdom – which is being […]

Lady Alison is Jocelin’s aunt and principal benefactor in The Spire. She is a scandalous character, having conducted an affair with the king. As such, […]

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 […]

In The Spire, Goody is married to Pangall, the impotent servant of the cathedral.  At the beginning of the novel, she is described by Dean […]