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Welcome to our resources page! You can filter by book, by category, and by format (text, sound and film). Use the research filter for higher-level items like critical bibliographies.

11 results

The little Oa

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

Australia

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 […]

Social class

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

Waterfall

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’. […]

Hunger

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

A dead pig's head on a stick.

Animals

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, […]

Civilisation vs savagery

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.

Rotten Row

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 […]

Religion

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

Savernake Forest

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 […]

BBC Adaptation: To the Ends of the Earth

In 2005 the BBC produced a mini-series adaptation of Golding’s A Sea Trilogy, called To the Ends of the Earth. Starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Edmund Talbot, […]

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