Historical Figure
Sir William Golding
1911–1993
British novelist, poet, and playwright (1911–1993)
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Biography
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.
Timeline
The story of Sir William Golding, told in moments.
Joined the Royal Navy and served throughout World War II, participating in the D-Day landings. The violence he witnessed permanently shaped his view of human nature. Before the war, he'd been a schoolteacher and aspiring poet.
Published Lord of the Flies after 21 rejections. The novel about boys descending into savagery on a deserted island became a bestseller and one of the most assigned books in English-speaking schools.
Won the Nobel Prize in Literature. The committee praised his "perspicuity of realistic narrative art and the diversity and universality of myth." He'd published 12 novels by then.
Died of heart failure in Perranarworthal, Cornwall, at 81. Knighted in 1988. The Times later ranked him third among the greatest British writers since 1945.
In Their Own Words (20)
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.
Interview in regard to his work Rites of Passage, quoted in The Dreams of William Golden, BBC Arena (2012), 2012
It seems to me that we do live in two worlds. There is is this physical one, which is coherent, and there is a spiritual one, which to the average man, with his flashes of religious experience, if you like to call them that — that world is very often incoherent. This experience of having two worlds to live in all the time, or… not all the time, occasionally, is a vital one and is what living is like.
As quoted in "The Dreams of William Golding", BBC Arena (2012), 2012
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.
As quoted in Novelists in Interview (1985) edited by John Haffenden, 1985
Words may, through the devotion, the skill, the passion, and the luck of writers prove to be the most powerful thing in the world. They may move men to speak to each other because some of those words somewhere express not just what the writer is thinking but what a huge segment of the world is thinking. They may allow man to speak to man, the man in the street to speak to his fellow until a ripple becomes a tide running through every nation — of commonsense, of simple healthy caution, a tide that rulers and negotiators cannot ignore so that nation does truly speak unto nation. Then there is hope that we may learn to be temperate, provident, taking no more from nature's treasury than is our due. It may be by books, stories, poetry, lectures we who have the ear of mankind can move man a little nearer the perilous safety of a warless and provident world. It cannot be done by the mechanical constructs of overt propaganda. I cannot do it myself, cannot now create stories which would help to make man aware of what he is doing; but there are others who can, many others. There always have been. We need more humanity, more care, more love. There are those who expect a political system to produce that; and others who expect the love to produce the system. My own faith is that the truth of the future lies between the two and we shall behave humanly and a bit humanely, stumbling along, haphazardly generous and gallant, foolishly and meanly wise until the rape of our planet is seen to be the preposterous folly that it is. For we are a marvel of creation. I think in particular of one of the most extraordinary women, dead now these five hundred years, Juliana of Norwich. She was caught up in the spirit and shown a thing that might lie in the palm of her hand and in the bigness of a nut. She was told it was the world. She was told of the strange and wonderful and awful things that would happen there. At the last, a voice told her that all things should be well and all manner of things should be well and all things should be very well. Now we, if not in the spirit, have been caught up to see our earth, our mother, Gaia Mater, set like a jewel in space. We have no excuse now for supposing her riches inexhaustible nor the area we have to live on limitless because unbounded. We are the children of that great blue white jewel. Through our mother we are part of the solar system and part through that of the whole universe. In the blazing poetry of the fact we are children of the stars.
1983
While it may be proper to praise the idea of a laureate the man himself may very well remember what his laurels will hide and that not only baldness. In a sentence he must remember not to take himself with unbecoming seriousness. Fortunately some spirit or other — I do not presume to put a name to it — ensured that I should remember my smallness in the scheme of things. The very day after I learned that I was the laureate for literature for 1983 I drove into a country town and parked my car where I should not. I only left the car for a few minutes but when I came back there was a ticket taped to the window. A traffic warden, a lady of a minatory aspect, stood by the car. She pointed to a notice on the wall. "Can't you read?" she said. Sheepishly I got into my car and drove very slowly round the corner. There on the pavement I saw two county policemen. I stopped opposite them and took my parking ticket out of its plastic envelope. They crossed to me. I asked if, as I had pressing business, I could go straight to the Town Hall and pay my fine on the spot. "No, sir," said the senior policeman, "I'm afraid you can't do that." He smiled the fond smile that such policemen reserve for those people who are clearly harmless if a bit silly. He indicated a rectangle on the ticket that had the words 'name and address of sender' printed above it. "You should write your name and address in that place," he said. "You make out a cheque for ten pounds, making it payable to the Clerk to the Justices at this address written here. Then you write the same address on the outside of the envelope, stick a sixteen penny stamp in the top right hand corner of the envelope, then post it. And may we congratulate you on winning the Nobel Prize for Literature."
1983
Artifacts (13)
You have to look beyond Afghanistan to the sources of terrorism
e from the international community to destroy terrorist sanctuaries inside and outside Afghanistan. "You have to look beyond Afghanistan to the sources of terrorism", he told the UN General Assembly,...
These Arabs, together with their foreign supporters and the Taliban, destroyed m...
th the Taliban in September 2001, Karzai began urging NATO states to purge his country of al-Qaeda. He said in a BBC interview, "These Arabs, together with their foreign supporters and the Taliban,...
This does not have its seeds alone in Afghanistan. Military action in the countr...
is rebounding in his country, with militants infiltrating the borders to wage attacks on civilians. He stated, "This does not have its seeds alone in Afghanistan. Military action in the country will,...
If I can have a place where to send somebody to talk to, an authority that publi...
with the Taliban. They don't have an address. Who do we talk to?" Karzai told reporters. He further stated: "If I can have a place where to send somebody to talk to, an authority that publicly says it...
We don't have any formal negotiations with the Taliban. They don't have an addre...
ing, the pair held a joint news conference, at which Karzai called for talks with his Taliban foes. "We don't have any formal negotiations with the Taliban. They don't have an address. Who do we talk...
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