It is of course very tempting to make the assumption that William Golding was actually writing about Salisbury school boys instead of a group of youngsters on a tropical island. Look carefully enough today and you could probably identify some suitable characters in the playground at Bishop’s, or at least the seeds of the personality traits are there. Boys, I am sure, have changed comparatively little over the last seven decades, and Golding was still working at the school when the first editions of ‘Lord of the Flies’ appeared in 1954. Ralph, Jack, Piggy, Simon and Sam ‘n Eric can be found - or parts of them anyway - as the masses emerge from the classrooms to run off some energy at break and lunch.
I am not so sure that it was those boys that he had in mind though, as his teaching career had started elsewhere, and his own experience of Marlborough Grammar School will have no doubt provided rich material to weave into his narrative and characterisation. As he makes clear in a letter to Bob Blackledge, his memory of boys at Bishop’s was one of all of those adolescent faces suffused into one, not unpleasant image of youth. His experience of teaching in Salisbury it would appear was informative rather than chastening, his recollection nostalgic and not traumatic. Thank goodness for all of that!
‘Scruff’, as he was (and still is) affectionately known by the boys whom he was taught was not a natural in the classroom; his pedagogical skills were vastly outshone by his literary genius and his musical talents. Anecdotes abound of boys being asked to complete word counts of his work when they were supposed to be learning philosophy. He does not seem to have been the life and soul of the staff ream either, but nonetheless his success as a writer and later as a Nobel Prize Winner were both celebrated in exuberant style, most notably by having champagne bottles floating in a tin bath full of ice in the staff room. The story goes that a member of the PE Department promptly performed a handstand over the bath when the booze had run dry…
‘Lord of the Flies’ deserves its place as one of the twentieth century’s greatest novels, and Golding his position as one of Britain’s finest writers. Seventy years has not dulled the edge of his writing, and his scathing allegory on the nature of power, leadership and ethical fragility remains as potent today as it was in the Cold War world when it first appeared. Enduring themes emerge through the pages of the book as the band of boys come to terms with their new existence - hope, despair, betrayal and fear of what lies beyond immediate experience. Great writing doesn’t fade with the passage of time, and human nature doesn’t change much either; the novel is about us and our adult societies rather than school boys, whether they were in Salisbury or elsewhere. We’re just hugely grateful that he spent around 17 years at Bishop’s, teaching occasionally…and writing, writing, writing…
