William Golding

  • Born

    William Golding was born in Newquay, Cornwall, England, on September 19th, 1911
  • Childhood

    A childhood event for William Golding was that in 1919, at the age of 8, he received a prize of a book in the ' 1919 Prize for General Improvement’.
  • Academics

    Golding’s feelings at Brasenose College, Oxford, studying natural sciences, but switched to English Literature.
  • Relationship

    Golding had been engaged to a woman from Marlborough, Mollie Evans, sometime in the 1930s. In 1938, Golding met Ann Brookfield. Golding and Ann married in 1939
  • Family

    David, their son, was born in 1940. Not long afterwards, Golding enlisted in the Navy to fight in the Second World War, where he would endure the worst horrors of his lifetime.
  • Career

    William served in 1940-1945 service in the Royal Navy, wrote his 1954 novel Lord of the Flies, and returned to teaching until retiring in 1961.
  • Book LOF

    William Golding published his book Lord of the Flies on September 17th, 1954
  • Other

    After 12 years of writer's block, he published the novel Darkness Visible and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1979
  • Awards

    William Golding won a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1983
  • Death

    William Golding's cause of death was congestive heart failure, a heart attack, on June 19, 1993, at the age of 81, in his home