Resources

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 […]

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 […]

Fa is a member of ‘The People’ in The Inheritors. Although not explicitly stated, it is likely that she is the mother of Liku, and is […]

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

Liku is the youngest female member of the family group in The Inheritors. Although not explicitly stated, she is probably the daughter of Lok and […]

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.

Ha is the strongest male of the group of Neanderthals portrayed in The Inheritors and is intelligent and thoughtful. Described by Golding as ‘the man for […]

In The Inheritors Mal is the oldest member of the Neanderthal group.  At the beginning of the novel, he is clearly very frail but is […]

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

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 […]