Sir William Gerald Golding was a British novel writer, poet, playwright and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate, well known for his novel Lord of the Flies. He was also prized the Booker Prize for literature in 1980 for his novel Rites of Passage, the first book of the trilogy To the Ends of the Earth.
In 2008, The Times ranked Golding third on their list of The 50 greatest British authors since 1945.
(William Golding photo #2)
William Golding started life in his grandmother's house, 47 Mountwise, Newquay, Cornwall and he spent many childhood holidays there. He grew up at his family home in Marlborough, Wiltshire, where his dad was a science master at Marlborough Grammar Colledge. Alec Golding was a socialist with a strong commitment to scientific rationalism, and the young Golding and his elder brother Joseph attended the colledge where his dad taught. His mom, Mildred, kept house at 29, The Green, Marlborough, and supported the moderate campaigners for female suffrage. In 1930 Golding went to Oxford High school as an undergraduate at Brasenose College, where he read Natural Sciences for two years before transferring to English Literature.
(William Golding photo #3)
Golding took his B. Second Class in the summer of 1934, and later that year his first book, Poems, was released in London by Macmillan & Co, through the help of his Oxford friend, the anthroposophist Adam Bittleston.
William Golding
