1911-1993
Who Was William Golding?
William Golding was a British novelist best know for his Nobel Prize-winning novel Lord of the Flies. Golding began his career as an English and philosophy teacher in Salisbury in 1935, temporarily leaving to join the Royal Navy. In 1954, he published his first novel, Lord of the Flies, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He went on to write several more novels, including The Inheritors (1955), The Spire (1964), and Rites of Passage (1980). Golding died at 81 years old in 1993.
Quick Facts
FULL NAME: Sir William Gerald Golding
BORN: September 19, 1911
DIED: June 19, 1993
BIRTHPLACE: Newquay, Cornwall, England
SPOUSE: Ann Brookfield (1939-1993)
CHILDREN: David and Judith
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Virgo
Early Life
William Golding was born on September 19, 1911 in Newquay Cornwall, England. He was raised in a 14th-century house next door to a graveyard in the small village of St. Columb Minor. His mother, Mildred, was an active suffragette who fought for women’s right to vote, and his father, Alex, worked as a schoolmaster.
William received his early education at Marlborough Grammar School, where his father worked. When William was just 12 years old, he attempted to write a novel but did not succeed. A frustrated child, he found an outlet in bullying his peers. Later in life, William would describe his childhood self as a brat, even going so far as to say, “I enjoyed hurting people.”
After primary school, William went on to attend Brasenose College at Oxford University. His father hoped he would become a scientist, but William opted to study English literature instead. In 1934, a year before he graduated, William published his first work, a book of poetry aptly entitled Poems. The collection was largely overlooked by critics.
Teaching Career
After college, Golding worked in settlement houses and the theater for a time. Eventually, he decided to follow in his father’s footsteps. In 1935, 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.
Although passionate about teaching from day one, Golding temporarily abandoned the profession to enlist in the military and fight in World War II. He later returned to teaching after the war before retiring in 1961.
Military Service
Golding joined the Royal Navy in 1940 and spent much of the next five 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.
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.
Later reflecting on his experiences in World War II, Golding said: “I began to see what people were capable of doing. Anyone who moved through those years without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey, must have been blind or wrong in the head.”
After the war ended in 1945, Golding went back to teaching and writing, but his time in the military would prove fruitful material for his fiction.
Lord of the Flies
In 1954, after 21 rejections, Golding published his first and most acclaimed novel, Lord of the Flies. The novel told the gripping story of a group of adolescent boys stranded on a deserted island after a plane wreck. 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, the book set the tone for Golding’s future work, 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, worthy of in-depth analysis and discussion in classrooms around the world.
In 1963, 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, and in 1988, he was knighted by England’s Queen Elizabeth II.
In 1990, a second film version of the Lord of the Flies was released, bringing the book to the attention of a new generation of readers. In May 2026, the novel is getting its first TV adaptation with a four-part limited series on Netflix.
Other Books
Following his success with Lord of the Flies, Golding went on to write a dozen more books. He expanded on his allegorical fiction writing with novels like The Inheritors (1955) and The Spire (1966) and drew upon on his experience in the Royal Navy for some of his later works.
In 1980, he published Rites of Passage, about a young aristocrat’s sea voyage to Australia, for which he won the Booker Prize that year. Golding later followed up with the sequels Close Quarters (1987) and Fire Down Below (1989). Some of his other successful novels include Pincher Martin (1956), Free Fall (1959), and The Pyramid (1967).
While Golding was mainly a novelist, his body of work also includes poetry, plays, essays, and short stories.
Wife and Children
Golding met his wife Ann Brookfield, an analytical alchemist, at a book club in London in 1939 and the couple married later that year. They went on to have two children together, welcoming their son David in 1940 and their daughter Judith in 1945. Golding and Brookfield were married for more than 50 years until his death in 1993.
Death and Legacy
Golding spent the last few years of his life quietly living with his wife at their house near Falmouth, Cornwall, where he continued to toil at his writing.
On June 19, 1993, Golding died of a heart attack in Perranarworthal, Cornwall. After he died, his completed manuscript for The Double Tongue was published posthumously.
Golding wrote many successful novels but his exploration of the darker side of human nature in Lord of the Flies has had a profound impact on pop culture, leading to an array of books, movies, and TV shows that aim to explore similar themes of civilization vs. savagery.
Quotes
- I am not a theologian or a philosopher. I am a storyteller.
- I think man suffers from an appalling ignorance of his own nature.
- I'd rather there wasn't an afterlife, really. I'd much rather not be me for thousands of years.
- I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men. They are far superior and always have been.
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