1. William Golding By Jason Tolbert

2. About • William Gerald Golding was an English novelist, poet, playwright and Nobel Prize in Literature laureate, best known for his novel Lord of the Flies. He was also awarded the Booker Prize for literature in 1980 for his novel Rites of Passage, the first book of the trilogy To the Ends of the Earth.

3. Early Life • William Golding was born in his grandmother's house, and he spent many childhood holidays there. He grew up at his family home in Marlborough, Wiltshire. • In 1930 Golding went to Oxford University as an undergraduate at Brasenose College, where he read Natural Sciences for two years before transferring to English Literature.

4. Marriage and Family • Golding married Ann Brookfield, an analytic chemist, on 30 September 1939 and they had two children, Judith and David.

5. War service • William Golding joined the Royal Navy in 1940. During World War II, Golding fought in the Royal Navy (on board a destroyer) briefly involved in the pursuit and sinking of the German battleship Bismarck. He also participated in the invasion of Normandy on D-Day, commanding a landing ship that fired salvoes of rockets onto the beaches, and then in a naval action at Walcheren in which 23 out of 24 assault craft were sunk. At the war's end, he returned to teaching and writing.

6. Death • In 1985, Golding and his wife moved to Tullimaar House at Perranarworthal, near Truro, Cornwall, where he died of heart failure, eight years later, on 19 June 1993. He was buried in the village churchyard at Bowerchalke, South Wiltshire. He left the draft of a novel, The Double Tongue, set in ancient Delphi, which was published. He is survived by his daughter, the author Judy Golding, and his son David, who still lives at Tullimaar House.

7. Writing Success • Williams writing success was so successful it allowed him to resign from his teaching career at Bishop Roads worth School.

8. Lord of the Flies • In Lord of the Flies, which was published in 1954, Golding combined that perception of humanity with his years of experience with schoolboys. Although not the first novel he wrote, Lord of the Flies was the first to be published after having been rejected by 21 publishers. An examination of the duality of savagery and civilization in humanity, Golding uses a pristine tropical island as a protected environment in which a group of marooned British schoolboys act out their worst impulses. The boys loyal to the ways of civilization face persecution by the boys indulging in their innate aggression. As such, the novel illustrates the failure of the rationalism espoused by Golding's father.

9. The family writing tradition was passed down to Williams kids

10. Sites • http://www.cliffsnotes.com/study_guide/literature/lord-of-the-flies/william-golding-biography.html • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Golding • http://www.google.com/imghp?hl=en&tab=wi