  
William Golding was born in Cornwall in 1911. He was
educated at Marlborough Grammar School and at Brasenose College, Oxford, after which he
worked as an actor, a lecturer, a small craft sailor, a musician, and finally a
school-master. A now rare volume, Poems, appeared in 1934. He joined the Royal Navy
in 1940, and saw action against battleships, submarines and aircraft. He was present at
the sinking of the Bismarck, and finished the war as a Lieutenant in command of a rocket
ship. After the war he returned to Bishop Wordsworth's School in Salisbury and was there
when his first novel, Lord of the Flies, was published in 1954. He gave up teaching in
1961, and went on to write twelve more novels, including The Inheritors, Pincher
Martin, and The Spire.
Golding's play The Brass Butterfly was produced at the New Theatre,
Oxford in 1958, directed by Alistair Sim. Lord of the Flies was filmed by Peter
Brook in 1963. Golding listed his hobbies as music, chess, sailing, archaeology and
classical Greek (which he taught himself). Many of these subjects appear in his two
collections of essays, The Hot Gates, and A Moving Target. He won the Booker
Prize for his novel Rites of Passage in 1980, and was awarded the Nobel Prize for
Literature in 1983. At this time he moved from the Wiltshire village where he had lived
for half a century, to a fine house near Truro in Cornwall. He was knighted in 1988. He
died at his home in the summer of 1993, leaving a draft of a novel, The Double Tongue,
which was published posthumously.
Complete works:
Fiction
Lord of the Flies
The Inheritors
Pincher Martin
Free Fall
The Pyramid
The Scorpion God
Darkness Visible
The Paper Men
Rites of Passage
Close Quarters
Fire Down Below
The Double Tongue
To the Ends of the Earth
(a revised text of Rites of Passage, Close Quarters and Fire Down
Below in one volume)
Essays
The Hot Gates
A Moving Target
Travel
An Egyptian Journal
Play
The Brass Butterfly |
  Nigel
Williams was born in Cheshire in 1948, educated at Highgate School and Oriel College,
Oxford and is married with three sons. His first stage play was Double Talk at
Square One Theatre in 1976.
His subsequent stage plays include:-
Class Enemy (Royal Court 1978, presented all over the world and won him the Plays
and Players Most Promising Playwright Award); Trial Run (Oxford Playhouse 1980); Line
'Em (National 1980); Sugar and Spice (Royal Court 1980); WCPC (Half Moon
1982); My Brother's Keeper (Greenwich 1985); Country Dancing (RSC Stratford
1986); Nativity (Tricycle Theatre, London 1989); Lord of the Flies, an
adaptation of the novel by William Golding (RSC 1995). Harry & Me, his latest
play, was staged by The Royal Court Thetre in 1996. A stage adaptation of The Last
Romantics premiered at the Greenwich Theatre also in 1996.
For Television and Film:-
Talking Blues (BBC 1977); Real Live Audience (BBC 1977); Baby Love
(BBC 1981); Johnny Jarvis (BBC 1983); Charlie (Central 1984 repeated in two
parts January 1987); Breaking Up (BBC 1986); Kremlin Farewell (BBC2 1990); Centrepoint
(4 part series, Channel Four 1990). His film, The Last Romantics, based on
the careers of Sir Arthur Quiller Couch and FR Leavis, was transmitted on BBC2. His
adaptation of his novel Witchcraft has been transmitted by the BBC, as has his film
adaptation of the William Horwood novel, Skallagrigg. He has also written the
adaptation of The Canterville Ghost for Paramount. He adapted his novel, The
Wimbledon Poisoner, as a two part television series which was transmitted on BBC1 in
December 1994. His TV Film, It Could Be You, was transmitted by the BBC in 1995.
Novels:-
My Life Closed Twice (1977) - won the Somerset Maughan Award; Jack Be Nimble
(1980); Star Turn (1985); Black Magic (1986); Witchcraft (1987); The
Wimbledon Poisoner (1990); They Came From SW19 (1992); East of
Wimbledon (1993); Two and a Half Men in a Boat (1993); Scenes from a Poisoner's
Life (1994); From Wimbledon to Waco (1995); Stalking Fiona (1997).
Photograph by Chris Love 1980
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