Back to Blog
William golding5/12/2023 Food was not plentiful, and even scarcity could not make it interesting. Postwar austerity and rationing had restricted life to a degree hard to convey now. It was barely nine years since the end of the second world war. Some of the book’s preoccupations are understandable. Faber published it 60 years ago, on 16 September 1955, and it remained my father’s favourite among his novels for the rest of his life. It was also fast: the first draft took him little more than a month, astonishing when you consider that he had a fulltime teaching job as well. But at the same time his writing was vivid, original and – you would have said – fearless. My father was always full of self-doubt and very dependent on these two trusted critics. Between him and my mother (always my father’s first reader), confidence was sustained, and the new book completed in draft. Charles Monteith, his editor at Faber & Faber, was aware of the problem.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |