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William Golding
Sir William Gerald Golding was a British novelist, playwright, and poet. Best known for his debut novel Lord of the Flies (1954), Golding published another 12 volumes of fiction in his lifetime. In 1980, Golding was awarded the Booker Prize for Rites of Passage, the first novel in what became his sea trilogy, To the Ends of the Earth. Golding was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize in Literature.
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culture · British novelist, poet, and playwright (1911–1993) · writer · poet · novelist · screenwriter · science fiction writer · also William Golding, Willy Gold, Golding
Born 19 September 1911 · Died 19 June 1993 · Q44183
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2026· 5 entries
“How can you expect to be rescued if you don’t put first things first and act proper?”
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Options, The Edge: Henry Golding talks about his latest watch purchases and upcoming film 'Close Personal Friends'
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Kalkine: NRW Holdings Subsidiary Golding Awarded $130 Million Civil Works Contracts at Yarrabilba and Shoreline Estates
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247Sports: For Baker, familiarity and belief in Golding made decision to return to Ole Miss easy
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2025· 1 entry
The Guardian: William Golding: The Faber Letters review – the making of a masterpiece
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2024· 1 entry
Snopes rated the claim “Author William Golding said: "I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men. They are far superior and always have been. Whatever you give a woman, she will make greater. If you give her sperm, she will give you a baby. If you give her a house, she will give you a home. If you give h…” Mixture.
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2021· 1 entry
The Guardian: Monique Roffey: ‘William Golding’s The Inheritors gave me ideas for how I could write a mermaid’
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2020· 1 entry
The Guardian: William Golding did not smack his kids | Letter
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2016· 1 entry
Snopes rated the claim “Lord of the Flies author William Golding once said that women are "far superior [to men] and always have been."” True.
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2008· 1 entry
The Times ranked Golding third on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945"
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1993· 7 entries
Died 1993-06-19.
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And the work came to be thousands of pages long by this time
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“I don’t like the word "allegorical", I don’t like the word "symbolic", the word I really like is "mythic" and people always think that means "full of lies" when what it really means is full of a truth that cannot be told in any other way but a story.”
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“The writer probably knows what he meant when he wrote a book, but he should immediately forget what he meant when he's written it.”
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“Basically I'm an optimist. Intellectually I can see man's balance is about fifty-fifty, and his chances of blowing himself up are about one to one. I can't see this any way but intellectually. I'm just emotionally unable to believe that he will do this. This means that I am by nature an optimist and by intellectual conviction a pessimist, I suppose.”
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“The man who tells the tale if he has a tale worth telling will know exactly what he is about and this business of the artist as a sort of starry-eyed inspired creature, dancing along, with his feet two or three feet above the surface of the earth, not really knowing what sort of prints he's leaving behind him, is nothing like the truth.”
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“The Herr Doctor does not know about peoples.”
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1988· 1 entry
Awarded Knight Bachelor (1988).
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1985· 1 entry
Golding and his wife moved to a house called Tullimaar in Perranarworthal, near Truro, Cornwall
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1984· 1 entry
Published The Paper Men: an account of the struggles between a novelist and his would-be biographer
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1983· 4 entries
Awarded 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.
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Awarded honorary doctor of the Sorbonne Nouvelle University (1983).
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Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature (1983).
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Golding was awarded the Nobel Prize for 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"
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1980· 4 entries
Awarded Booker Prize for Rites of Passage (1980).
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Golding was awarded the Booker Prize for Rites of Passage, the first novel in what became his sea trilogy, To the Ends of the Earth
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Golding published Rites of Passage, the first of his novels about a voyage to Australia in the early nineteenth century
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And Golding followed this success with Close Quarters (1987) and Fire Down Below (1989) to complete his 'sea trilogy', later published as one volume entitled To the Ends of the Earth
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1979· 2 entries
Awarded James Tait Black Memorial Prize (1979).
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And the Booker Prize for Rites of Passage in 1980
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1967· 1 entry
Golding experienced a severe writer's block, the result of a myriad of crises: family anxieties, insomnia, and a general sense of dejection
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1961· 1 entry
And Golding spent that academic year in the United States as writer-in-residence at Hollins College (now Hollins University), near Roanoke, Virginia
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1958· 1 entry
From Salisbury to nearby Bowerchalke, Golding met his fellow villager and walking companion James Lovelock
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1956· 1 entry
Was reworked by Golding into a play, The Brass Butterfly, in 1958
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1951· 1 entry
Golding began writing a manuscript of the novel initially titled Strangers from Within
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1935· 1 entry
Golding took a job teaching English at Michael Hall School, a Steiner-Waldorf school then in Streatham, South London, staying there for two years
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1930· 1 entry
Golding went to Brasenose College, Oxford, where he read natural sciences for two years before transferring to English for his final two years
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1911· 1 entry
Born 1911-09-19.
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