William Golding

William Golding (1911-1993), British novelist, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1983. William Gerald Golding was born at Saint Columb Minor in Cornwall and educated at Brasenose College at the University of Oxford, where he studied English literature. Golding spent a short time working in the theater as a writer and actor. He then trained to be a teacher, a profession he left during World War II (1939-1945), when he served in the Royal Navy.

After the war Golding returned to writing. His first novel, The Lord of the Flies (1954; motion picture by English director Peter Brook, 1963), was extremely successful and is considered one of the great works of 20th-century literature. Based on Golding's own wartime experiences, it is the story of a group of schoolboys marooned on a desert island after a plane crash. An allegory of the intrinsic corruption of human nature, it chronicles the boys' descent from a state of relative innocence to one of revengeful barbarism. After Lord of the Flies he wrote several novels with similar themes of good and evil in human nature, including The Inheritors (1955) and Pincher Martin (1956). Much of Golding's writing explores moral dilemmas and human reactions in extreme situations. His trilogy—consisting of Rites of Passage (1980), winner of the Booker Prize, an annual award for outstanding literary achievement in the Commonwealth of Nations; Close Quarters (1987); and Fire Down Below (1989)—reflects Golding's interest in the sea and sailing. His other works include two collections of essays, The Hot Gates (1965) and A Moving Target (1982); and one play, The Brass Butterfly (1958). Golding was knighted in 1988 (see Knight). His last novel, The Double Tongue, was published posthumously in 1995.