William Golding (1911-1993) was a Booker and Nobel Prize-winning author, best known for his first novel, Lord of the Flies, published originally in 1954 and adapted for film in 1963. His other works include The Inheritors (1955), Pincher Martin (1956), The Spire (1964), Rites of Passage (1980), The Double Tongue (published posthumously in 1995) a now rare volume, Poems (1934) and the essay collections The Hot Gates and A Moving Target.
Golding was educated at Marlborough Grammar School and at Brasenose College, Oxford. Before his writing career, Golding was a schoolmaster. He was also a keen actor, musician and small-boat sailor.
In 2008, The Times ranked Golding third on their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
William Golding (1911 - 1993) was born in Cornwall and educated at Marlborough Grammar School and Brasenose College, Oxford. Before becoming a writer, he was an actor, small-boat sailor, musician and schoolteacher. In 1940 he joined the Royal Navy and took part in the D-Day operation and liberation of Holland.
Lord of the Flies, his first novel, was rejected by several publishers but rescued from the 'reject pile' at Faber and published in 1954. It became a modern classic selling millions of copies, translated into 44 languages and made into a film by Peter Brook in 1963. Golding wrote eleven other novels, a play and two essay collections. He won the Booker Prize for
Rites of Passage in 1980 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1983. He was knighted in 1988 and died in 1993. www.william-golding.co.uk
Two Faces of Liberalism,
Isaiah Berlin,
Straw Dogs and
False Dawn, which has been translated into thirteen languages.