His work is often principally concerned with the fundamental corruption and evil inherent in human nature. His first book, Lord of the Flies 1954, concerns the degeneration into savagery of a group of English schoolboys marooned on a Pacific island. Pincher Martin 1956 is a study of greed and self-delusion. Later novels include The Spire 1964 and Darkness Visible 1979. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature 1983, and knighted 1988. The Sea Trilogy, Rites of Passage 1980 (Booker Prize), Close Quarters 1987, and Fire Down Below 1989, tells the story of a voyage to Australia through the eyes of a callow young aristocrat. Lord of the Flies, although initially turned down by no less than 15 publishers, sold over 2 million copies in ten years. Translated into several languages, it became a cult book, especially in the USA, and remains a prescribed text for many English literature courses. The film version, by Peter Brook 1962, was also highly successful. Golding was born in Cornwall, England. He grew up in Wiltshire and was educated at Marlborough grammar school, where his father was a master. He attended Brasenose College, Oxford 1932-35. While still an undergraduate, he published Poems 1934, a slim volume that he later did his best to disown. After Oxford he worked for a few years as actor, writer, and director for a number of small theatre companies and in 1939 joined the teaching staff at Bishop Wordsworth's School, Salisbury. He spent the war years between 1940 and 1945 in the Royal Navy, as an officer in charge of a rocket ship and instructor of naval cadets. He returned to his teaching post after the war, resigning 1961 when the success of Lord of the Flies, a parody of R M Ballantyne's idealistic classic Coral Island 1858, made it possible for him to write full-time. Golding's novels were never about trivial or ephemeral matters. They dealt with universal themes and anxieties: evil, greed, guilt, primal instincts, and unknown forces. His first childhood memory was of the terror and darkness he felt in the flint-walled cellar of the family's medieval house in Marlborough. Significant also was the proximity of numerous prehistoric sites, like Silbury Hill and Stonehenge. He thought of archaeologists as explorers of the darkness under the earth. He learnt ancient Greek during World War II and his study of the Greek myths, Homer, and the tragedians was an important influence. In The Inheritors 1955, savage Homo sapiens brutally defeat the inarticulate but feeling Neanderthals. Among Golding's other novels are Freefall 1959 and The Scorpion God 1971. Darkness Visible, a disturbing book full of symbolism, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Two of Golding's important essay collections were published, The Hot Gates and Other Occasional Pieces 1966 and A Moving Target 1982, and a travel book An Egyptian Journey 1985.
