William Golding

By BradyAmore

  • Birth

    Birth
    William Golding was born on the 19th of September, in Saint Columb Minor, Cornwall, England

  • Teaching

    Teaching
    Golding took a position teaching English and philosophy at Bishop Wordsworth’s School in Salisbury. Golding’s experience teaching unruly young boys would later serve as inspiration for his novel Lord of the Flies.

  • Royal Navy

    Royal Navy
    Golding decided to temporarily abandon teaching and join the Royal Navy. Golding spent the better part of the next six years on a boat, except for a seven-month stint in New York, where he assisted Lord Cherwell at the Naval Research Establishment. While in the Royal Navy, Golding developed a lifelong romance with sailing and the sea.

  • World War II

    World War II
    During World War II, he fought battleships at the sinking of the Bismarck, and also fended off submarines and planes. Lieutenant Golding was even placed in command of a rocket-launching craft.

  • Lord Of The Flies

    Lord Of The Flies
    After 21 rejections, Golding published his first and most acclaimed novel, Lord of the Flies. Lord of the Flies explored the savage side of human nature as the boys, let loose from the constraints of society, brutally turned against one another in the face of an imagined enemy. Riddled with symbolism in which he continued to examine man’s internal struggle between good and evil. Since its publication, the novel has been widely regarded as a classic.

  • Retirement

    Retirement
    The year after Golding retired from teaching, Peter Brook made a film adaptation of the critically acclaimed novel. Two decades later, at the age of 73, Golding was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize for Literature. In 1988 he was knighted by England’s Queen Elizabeth II.

  • Death & Legacy

    Death & Legacy
    Golding died of a heart attack in Perranarworthal, Cornwall. After Golding died, his completed manuscript for The Double Tongue was published posthumously. Among the most successful novels of Golding’s writing career were Rites of Passage (winner of the 1980 Booker McConnell Prize), Pincher Martin, Free Fall, and The Pyramid. While Golding was mainly a novelist, his body of work also includes poetry, plays, essays, and short stories.