At 42, William Golding was known to his students merely as “Scruff”, the schoolmaster who scribbled stories in exercise books during lessons. His first novel, Lord of the Flies, had been rejected by publishers and dismissed as “rubbish and dull”. Feelings of growing insecurity drew him into a battle with alcoholism, whilst at night he was tormented by vividly disturbing dreams. Humble and perhaps unlikely beginnings for a man who would later go on to win the 1983 Nobel Prize for Literature, and is now revered by critics and readers alike as one of the most influential British writers of the late 20th century.
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