William Golding

1911–1993

English novelist, poet and playwright whose fiction examines violence, guilt and the fragility of civilised behaviour. Born in Cornwall, he studied at Brasenose College, Oxford, and taught English at Bishop Wordsworth’s School in Salisbury, an interval broken by service in the Royal Navy during the Second World War. His first novel, Lord of the Flies (1954), follows schoolboys stranded on an island. Later books include The Inheritors, Pincher Martin and The Spire. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1983, was knighted in 1988 and died in June 1993. Rites of Passage won the 1980 Booker Prize.

Timeline of William Golding’s life

Works

• Rites of Passage (1980)

Prizes

• Rites of Passage — The Booker Prize 1980: Winner, Shortlist