Editing William Golding (section)

===Early life===
[[File:William Golding's Plaque at Bishop Wordsworth's School.jpg|thumb|Plaque at [[Bishop Wordsworth's School]], [[Salisbury]].]]Son of Alec Golding, a science master at [[Marlborough Grammar School]] (1905 to retirement), and Mildred, née Curnoe,<ref>Raychel Haugrud Reiff, William Golding: Lord of the Flies, Marshall Cavendish, 2009</ref> William Golding was born at his maternal grandmother's house, 47 Mount Wise, [[Newquay]],<ref>Carey, Chap. 5 ('Childhood'), pg. 18.</ref> [[Cornwall]].<ref name=ODNB>Kevin McCarron, 'Golding, Sir William Gerald (1911–1993)', [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/52079 accessed 13 November 2007]</ref> The house was known as ''Karenza'', the [[Cornish language|Cornish]] word for love, and he spent many childhood holidays there.<ref>Carey, Chap 5 ('Childhood'), pg. 18.</ref> The Golding family lived at 29, The Green, [[Marlborough, Wiltshire]], Golding and his elder brother Joseph attending the school at which their father taught.<ref>(Which should not be confused with [[Marlborough College]], the nearby "public" boarding school).</ref> Golding's mother was a campaigner for female suffrage; she was [[Cornish people|Cornish]] and was considered by her son "a superstitious [[Celts|Celt]]", who used to tell him old Cornish ghost stories from her own childhood.<ref>Carey, Chap. 4 ('The House'), pg. 15.</ref> In 1930, Golding went to [[Brasenose College, Oxford]], where he read [[Natural Sciences]] for two years before transferring to English for his final two years.<ref>Carey, pp. 41, 49</ref> His original [[Tutorial system|tutor]] was the chemist [[Thomas Taylor (chemist)|Thomas Taylor]].<ref>Carey, p. 15</ref> In a private journal and in a memoir for his wife, he admitted that, as a teenager during a vacation, he tried to rape a teenage girl with whom he had previously taken piano lessons, perceiving her to have "wanted heavy sex".<ref>{{Cite news|last=Wainwright|first=Martin|date=16 August 2009|title=Author William Golding tried to rape teenager, private papers show|language=en-GB|work=The Guardian|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/aug/16/william-golding-attempted-rape|access-date=20 December 2019|issn=0261-3077}}</ref>

Golding took his B.A. degree with second class honours in the summer of 1934, and later that year a book of his ''[[Poems (poetry by Golding)|Poems]]'' was published by [[Macmillan Publishers|Macmillan & Co]], with the help of his Oxford friend, the [[anthroposophy|anthroposophist]] Adam Bittleston.

In 1935, he took a job teaching English at [[Michael Hall School]], a [[Steiner-Waldorf]] school then in 
Streatham, South London, staying there for two years.<ref>
William Golding Limited 2002,  ''William Golding: a chronological account'' http://www.william-golding.co.uk/media/22919/p_biog.pdf archived as 
https://web.archive.org/web/20160325201600/http://www.william-golding.co.uk/media/22919/p_biog.pdf accessed 17 February 2022. Quoted in 
Katie Shambaugh, ''About the Author – Lord of the flies'' https://katielordoftheflies.weebly.com/about-the-author.html</ref> After a year in Oxford studying for a Diploma of Education, he became a schoolmaster teaching English and music at [[Maidstone Grammar School]] from 1938 to 1940, before moving to [[Bishop Wordsworth's School]], [[Salisbury]], in April 1940. There he taught English, philosophy, Greek, and drama until joining the navy on 18 December 1940, reporting for duty at [[HMS Raleigh (shore establishment)|HMS Raleigh]]. He returned in 1945 and taught the same subjects until 1961.<ref>Carey, pp. 82, 111</ref>

Golding kept a personal journal for over 22 years<ref name="william-golding.co.uk">William Golding Website, https://william-golding.co.uk/timeline, Accessed 28 November 2020.</ref> from 1971 until the night before his death; it contained approximately 2.4 million words in total. The journal was initially used by Golding to record his dreams, but over time it began to function as a record of his life. The journals contained insights including retrospective thoughts about his novels and memories from his past. At one point Golding described setting his students up into two groups to fight each other – an experience he drew on when writing ''Lord of the Flies''.<ref>Carey, Chap 10 ('Teaching'), pgs. 125-6.</ref> [[John Carey (critic)|John Carey]], an emeritus professor of English literature at Oxford University, was eventually given 'unprecedented access to Golding's unpublished papers and journals by the Golding estate'.<ref name="william-golding.co.uk"/> Though Golding had not written the journals specifically so that a biography could be written about him, Carey published ''William Golding: The Man Who Wrote Lord of the Flies'' in 2009.<ref>Carey, John. ''The Man Who Wrote Lord of the Flies''. Faber, 2009.</ref>