William Golding

Verified Timeline

Lore & Background

Golding was born on 19 September 1911 at his maternal grandmother's house, 47 Mount Wise, Newquay, Cornwall, to Alec Golding, a science master at Marlborough Grammar School, and Mildred (née Curnoe), a campaigner for female suffrage. He studied natural sciences for two years at Brasenose College, Oxford, before transferring to English for his final two years, taking his B.A. with second class honours in summer 1934. He taught at Michael Hall School, Maidstone Grammar School, and Bishop Wordsworth's School, where he taught English, philosophy, Greek, and drama until joining the Royal Navy on 18 December 1940. During WWII, he served on a destroyer involved in the pursuit and sinking of the German battleship Bismarck, commanded a landing craft firing rockets on D-Day during the Normandy invasion, and was in action at Walcheren in October and November 1944, where 10 out of 27 assault craft were sunk. He rose to the rank of lieutenant. After the war, he returned to teaching until 1961. His debut novel Lord of the Flies was published in September 1954 after rejections from seven other publishers, championed by editor Charles Monteith at Faber and Faber. Golding won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Darkness Visible in 1979, the Booker Prize for Rites of Passage in 1980, and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1983. He was appointed CBE in 1966 and knighted in 1988. Golding struggled with alcohol, which he called 'the old, old anodyne,' and experienced a severe writer's block after The Pyramid in 1967, not publishing another novel for twelve years until Darkness Visible. He kept a personal journal from 1971 until the night before his death, containing approximately 2.4 million words.

Reader's Guide

William Golding's significance lies in his exploration of human nature through allegorical fiction, shaped by his wartime experiences and study of ancient Greek. Lord of the Flies (1954), initially titled Strangers from Within, describes a group of boys stranded on a tropical island descending into lawless existence before rescue. The Inheritors (1955) depicts gentle Neanderthals encountering deceitful modern humans. Pincher Martin (1956) records the thoughts of a drowning sailor, and Free Fall (1959) explores freedom of choice through a WWII soldier in a German POW camp. His sea trilogy To the Ends of the Earth began with Rites of Passage (1980), which won the Booker Prize. Golding suggested the name 'Gaia' for James Lovelock's hypothesis about Earth functioning as a single organism, and defended its ecological implications in essays like 'Gaia Lives, OK?' (1976) and 'The Earth's Revenge' (1990). His personal struggles—including a self-described 'crisis' involving alcoholism, insomnia, and writer's block—are documented in his journals, which John Carey accessed for his 2009 biography William Golding: The Man Who Wrote Lord of the Flies. In 2008, The Times ranked Golding third on its list of 'The 50 greatest British writers since 1945.'

Did You Know?

• Golding's mother Mildred was a campaigner for female suffrage, and Golding considered her 'a superstitious Celt' who told him old Cornish ghost stories.
• Golding served on a destroyer involved in the pursuit and sinking of the German battleship Bismarck during WWII.
• Golding suggested the name 'Gaia' for James Lovelock's hypothesis about Earth functioning as a single organism.
• Golding kept a personal journal for over 22 years from 1971 until the night before his death, containing approximately 2.4 million words.
• Golding's debut novel Lord of the Flies was initially rejected by seven publishers before being championed by editor Charles Monteith at Faber and Faber.