William Gerald Golding was born in Cornwall, England, in 1911, and educated at Oxford, where he studied physics and English literature. In Wolrd War II he joined the Royal British Navy and participated in D-Day operations. Following the war, he spent a number of years as a school teacher in Salisbury, England. It was during this time that he began his career as a writer. His other works include Pincher Martin (1957), Free Fall (1960), The Inheritors (1962), Spire (1964), and The Pyramid (1967). He also had a play produced on the London stage, The Brass Butterfly (1958), and published a collection of shorter works entitled Hot Gates and Other Occasional Pieces (1965). In 1983 Golding was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He died in 1993