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growing up
William Gerald Golding was born in Cornwall, England, in 1911. His mother, Mildred, was a strong supporter of the British suffragette movement -
Education
Golding began attending Brasenose College at Oxford in 1930 and spent two years studying science, in deference to his father's beliefs -
Career and later years
From 1935 to 1939, Golding worked as a writer, actor, and producer with a small theater in an unfashionable part of London, paying his bills with a job as a social worker. He considered the theater his strongest literary influence, citing Greek tragedians and Shakespeare, rather than other novelists, as his primary influences. -
Marriage
Golding married Ann Brookfield, a chemist. The couple would later have two children. -
William Goldings novels
The five years Golding spent in the navy (from 1940 to 1945) made an enormous impact, exposing him to the incredible cruelty and barbarity of which humankind is capable. Writing about his wartime experiences later, he asserted that "man produces evil, as a bee produces honey." -
Lord of the Flies
William Golding's most famous work, Lord of the Flies is Published -
The Inheritors.
William Golding writes his favorite of his novels, the inheritors. -
Booker Prize
Golding was awarded the Booker Prize for his novel Rights of Passage, which he turned into a series. -
Nobel Prize
William Golding receives the Nobel prize in literature for "his novels which, with the perspicuity of realistic narrative art and the diversity and universality of myth, illuminate the human condition in the world of today" -
Knighthood
William Golding was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in the summer of 1988. After knighting him, the queen asked Golding if he was still writing. Whenhe anwered that he was, she replied with the words "Oh good."