Editing William Golding (section)

===Fiction===
His first novel, ''[[Lord of the Flies]]'' (1954; film, 1963 and 1990; play, adapted by [[Nigel Williams (author)|Nigel Williams]], 1995), describes a group of boys stranded on a tropical island descending into a lawless and increasingly wild existence before being rescued.<ref>{{Cite news|date=16 September 2014|title=William Golding Flies classic holds true 60 years on|language=en-GB|work=BBC News|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-29205286|access-date=22 December 2020}}</ref> ''[[The Inheritors (William Golding)|The Inheritors]]'' (1955) depicts a tribe of gentle Neanderthals encountering modern humans, who by comparison are deceitful and violent. His 1956 novel ''[[Pincher Martin]]'' records the thoughts of a drowning sailor. ''[[Free Fall (Golding novel)|Free Fall]]'' (1959) explores the question of freedom of choice. The novel's narrator, a World War Two soldier in a German POW Camp, endures interrogation and solitary confinement. After these events and while recollecting the experiences, he looks back over the choices he has made, trying to trace precisely where he lost the freedom to make his own decisions. ''[[The Spire]]'' (1964) follows the construction (and near collapse) of an impossibly large spire on the top of a medieval cathedral (generally assumed to be [[Salisbury Cathedral]]).<ref name="MFS 1986 Harold H. Watts">{{cite journal | last=Watts | first=Harold H. | title=A View from the Spire: William Golding's Later Novels (review) | journal=MFS Modern Fiction Studies | volume=32 | issue=2 | date=1986 | issn=1080-658X | doi=10.1353/mfs.0.0492 | pages=321–322}}</ref>  

Golding's 1967 novel, ''[[The Pyramid (Golding)|The Pyramid]]'', consists of three linked stories with a shared setting in a small English town based partly on Marlborough where Golding grew up. ''[[The Scorpion God]]'' (1971) contains three novellas, the first set in an ancient Egyptian court ("The Scorpion God"); the second describing a prehistoric African hunter-gatherer group ("Clonk, Clonk"); and the third in the court of a Roman emperor ("Envoy Extraordinary"). The last of these, originally published in 1956, was reworked by Golding into a play, ''The Brass Butterfly'', in 1958. From 1971 to 1979, Golding published no novels. After this period he published ''[[Darkness Visible (Golding)|Darkness Visible]]'' (1979): a story involving terrorism, paedophilia, and a mysterious figure who survives a fire in [[the Blitz]] and appears to have supernatural powers. In 1980, Golding published ''[[To the Ends of the Earth#Rites of Passage|Rites of Passage]]'', the first of his novels about a voyage to Australia in the early nineteenth century. The novel won the [[Booker Prize]] in 1980 and Golding followed this success with ''[[To the Ends of the Earth#Close Quarters|Close Quarters]]'' (1987) and ''[[To the Ends of the Earth#Fire Down Below|Fire Down Below]]'' (1989) to complete his 'sea trilogy', later published as one volume entitled ''[[To the Ends of the Earth]]''. In 1984, he published ''[[The Paper Men]]'': an account of the struggles between a novelist and his would-be biographer.<ref name="Bufkin 1985 ">{{cite journal | last=Bufkin | first=E. C. | title=The Nobel Prize and the Paper Men: The Fixing of William Golding | journal=The Georgia Review | volume=39 | issue=1 | date=1985 | pages=55–65 }}</ref>