Dear reader,
As a child, did you dream of adventures on a desert island, days of fun without any adults in charge? Did that seem like an idyllic fantasy? William Golding certainly didn’t think so.
As we discussed on this week’s show, the grammar school teacher’s most famous novel, Lord of the Flies, imagines what might really happen if a group of boys are left to fend for themselves on a desert island, and the horrors that could unfold…
Many of you are likely to have read Lord of the Flies at school – it’s long been a favourite text of English literature examiners. It’s also frequently used as a cultural reference in everything from politics to reality television.
I’d definitely suggest it’s a classic worthy of a re-read. I say this despite it giving me actual nightmares this time around. For Dominic, he remembered being so disturbed after reading the novel as a child that he kept it separate from his other books, hiding it under his bed (a bit like when Joey in Friends hides The Shining in the freezer). What novels have genuinely terrified you? Tell us by emailing [email protected].
Talking of your brilliant correspondence, Lord of the Flies is a book many of you have requested since we started the show – especially since we referred to it so much in our The Hunger Games episode. I hope it was worth the wait.
Thank you for the push towards it, even if it did involve a fair amount of school-based ribbing from Dominic about my alma mater. It was fascinating learning more about Golding and the many inspirations behind his novel.
It was also a welcome change from those unreliable narrators. We’re sharing your correspondence on Humbert Humbert, and your many thoughts on Lolita below.
That’s as well as the usual Book Club Notes, from Rhiannon, polls and reading recommendations. We look forward to your analysis of Lord of the Flies.
Some lightness incoming with A Month in the Country next week...
Until next time,
If you enjoyed Lord of the Flies
Some more recommendations for your list
📚 Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome – If you’re in need of a palate cleanser, why not read one of those classic childhood adventure stories, that doesn’t go murderously wrong?
📚 William Golding by John Carey – The much-quoted biography contains fascinating insights into the life of Golding and how it shaped his writing.
📚 The Inheritors by William Golding – Dominic said this lesser-known novel by the author was, he thought, “actually even better” than Lord of the Flies. It tells the story of one of the last remaining tribes of Neanderthals.
📚 Battle Royale by Koushun Takami – An alternative story that finds a group of teenagers stranded on an island – this time deliberately by a totalitarian government, who place them there to fight to the death.
📺 Lord of the Flies (2026) – The BBC adaptation of Golding’s novel is superbly done and available for UK viewers on BBC iPlayer.
We need your vote
Lord of the Flies is a book populated by children and regularly taught in schools, but it also contains many distressing scenes and has an incredibly adult, bleak viewpoint. Dominic said he thought he was too young to read it aged 11. What do you think is the right age to introduce someone to Golding’s novel?
Click to vote – and remember to leave your name with a comment, so we can share your thoughts in next week's newsletter.
Notes on… Lord of the Flies
Nightmares aside, there are many reasons you might want to pick up Lord of the Flies, likely for a re-read. The human capacity for evil, original sin, the British class system, the psychology of children, politics – all of these can be found within the pages of Golding’s book. As an origin point for so many dystopian stories that have followed, it’s a must-read for all literature fans and one ripe for discussion at a book club too.
What is it about Lord of the Flies that makes this book such a difficult and memorable read? How does the writing convey a sense of violence that is so vivid and unsettling?
“It's children…that's what makes it so shocking and so powerful,” said Tabby. How does having the main characters of the story all being children affect how you read it?
Golding claimed his experiences of working as a teacher influenced the novel more heavily than his experience of war. “I have lived for many years with small boys, and understand and know them with awful precision,” he said.
What do you think Golding gets right about the behaviour of young boys – and what does he get wrong?
How important is it that the book is populated just by boys? How would it be changed by a mixed group, or if the story was centred around girls?
A recent BBC adaptation of Lord of the Flies was directed by Jack Thorne, who also directed the Netflix show Adolescence. As Tabby pointed out, both focus on themes of teenage boyhood and brutality, despite being created 70 years apart. Could you see parallels between the stories? How much of what Golding exposes or interrogates about teenage boys is still relevant today?
“The truth is, my deepest unconscious desire would be to show Marlborough and then piddle on them,” said Golding, describing how his dislike of the famous public school motivated this novel. How important do you think class is to the story? Piggy represents a lower social class, in what ways is he “othered”?
Golding said of his experiences in World War Two: “Anyone who moved through those years without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey must have been blind or wrong in the head.”
Where did you see the influence of Golding’s time during the war (where he was involved at D-Day and the Battle of Walcheren) in his story and characterisation?
Dominic described the book as “one of the great cultural reckonings with the horrors of the mid-20th century”. Golding manages this without setting the novel in World War Two or really depicting a battle. Do you agree with Dominic? How does Golding reckon with what happened to his generation?
Lord of the Flies is heavily influenced by the idea of original sin (the Christian notion that we are all born sinful), which became a popular subject for post-war writers. How is the “beast” in the book used as a metaphor for the evil that lurks within the boys?
In her assessment, Tabby said: “I think that people can be good and kind in extreme situations. You read about them all over human history. So I could have done with a little bit of that.” Do you think this book is too pessimistic about how people might behave without social constraints?
The presenters discussed how Ralph can be seen to epitomise the weak democratic politicians of the 1930s while Jack can be viewed as a portrait of a fascist or populist dictator. Which other characters can you liken to politicians or archetypes of the era? Does it ever feel like the boys are just archetypes? Or did you feel the characters are well drawn?
“It's where he really earns his medals as a writer, that he is able both to give us the external narrator's view of things but also what the boys make of it,” said Dominic of Golding’s writing.
Where did you find the third-person omniscient narration particularly effective?
“Sexual sadism is such a huge part of Golding’s oeuvre,” said Dominic. The presenters discussed how the scene where the boys hunt and kill the pig is particularly disturbing through this lens. Where else did you see sexual violence?
In the BBC adaptation, the script included “backstories” into the lives of the boys, which Tabby felt “detracts from Golding’s message because he's saying there's no cause and effect. You're not evil because things happen to you. He's saying you're evil, full stop.” Do you agree? Would you have liked to know more about the boys’ lives?
The whole point of the book, Golding said, was the bleak ending lines where Ralph “weeps for the end of innocence and the darkness of a man’s heart”. What do you think author meant by this? And what does the naval officer and the final image of the “trim cruiser in the distance” symbolise?
The quote that says it all
“Maybe there is a beast… maybe it’s only us.”
Simon speaks the truth at the heart of the novel and one Golding repeatedly commented on after his experience of war and of teaching young children. But what quote stayed with you after you finished the book? Email us and let us know.
Who should you give this to?
Someone most definitely over the age of 11? A colleague with an optimistic world view that needs taking down a notch? A Marlborough College alumnus?
Tell us, who would you share this book with?
Recommended reads
We take recommendations here to share with the Book Notes community. Tell us what book fellow members should pick up next by sending two or three sentences about your novel of choice and we’ll feature as many as we can in future weeks… Email [email protected].
Kathy says Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver “is such a great coming of age book and the parallels with David Copperfield are so interesting. There is a lot of humour as well as insight into the problems facing this section of American society.”
Rebecca needs people to read ergodic novel House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski so she has someone to discuss it with. It contains “convoluted page layouts, upside-down text, and colour-coded words that require the reader to work to traverse the narrative. I hated it but then I enjoyed it and when it ended I needed to discuss it,” she says.
The Forty Days of Musa Dagh by Franz Werfel should be your next read, says Michael: “A beautifully written fictionalisation of an actual event. The people of several Armenian villages withdraw to Musa Dagh and hold off the Ottoman army until those who survive are rescued by the French navy.”
Searching for your next book club novel (and have already used up all our Book Notes)? Julian – a librarian at Yale Law School – suggests How to Be Both by Ali Smith. “Beautiful, experimental, moving, with lashings of renaissance art,” he says. “A real book club book, in the best possible way.”
David wants you to try True Grit by Charles Portis. “A great American book that describes the western frontier of America more realistically than most books. And has been turned into two award winning movies,” he says, adding: “Funny, realistic, pacy, short.”
Reviewers’ corner
We can’t wait to see your responses to Lord of the Flies. Write in to [email protected] with ‘review’ in the subject line and tell us…
What elements of the novel you found most chilling.
Whether you stand with Golding’s bleak view of the darkness inside us all.
Now, onto your feedback on our last book, Lolita.
Your polls
We asked whether you like a challenging read, or prefer some more straightforward entertainment. Overwhelmingly, it seems you like things tough, with 75% of you opting for challenging reads. We loved the idea that a harder book can be “aerobics for the mind”.
However, on the whole, commenters said it was more nuanced. David wrote: “I do love a challenging read but also a nice mystery or sci-fi to curl up with. A well-known critic once wrote: ‘There are only two kinds of books – good ones and bad ones!’”
Jay agreed. “I love a challenging read, but I balance that with what some would call ‘cheap detective fiction,’” he writes. “Tacitus or Tolstoy followed by Coben or Connelly. Maybe even, dare I say, a romantasy. You need some simple comfort food after a 3 star dinner!”
Sticking with the food metaphors, Mike said: “I like both. Having just one flavour is boring. I purposefully and deliberately switch styles from one book to the next. So some days it’s fine dining and some days it’s a greasy cheeseburger.”
We have some sympathy with Sandra, who spoke for the 25% of easy readers. “I read to relax as my life is stressful,” she said. “As a result I like straightforward books.”
When it came to rating Lolita, the 10/10s edged it with 41% of the votes, but it was certainly divisive with a decent portion of you claiming it should get 1/10.
Of those who heaped praise, Debra wrote: “An incredible and stylistically masterful book. It is a shame so many people are put off by the subject matter. I recommend Lolita in the Afterlife, an amazing book of essays by edited by Jennifer Minton Quigley.” “Sumptuously written with acid sharp humour that are both disarming given the subject matter,” wrote Douglas. “A masterpiece of difficult writing made delightfully readable.”
Many found the subject matter too much of a block. One said: “No amount of style can get me past the implicit abuse. No matter how I try it’s like a heavy weight that continually breaks through. It’s all very clever writing but sick at heart.” Another added: “I wasn’t amused by the narrator. Despite the tricks and puzzles I found his tale tedious and boring, and couldn’t bring myself to finish.”
Jonathan wrote: “Lolita is a novel which mocks the reader as much as it caresses them. It is, essentially, a work of grooming push-pull where H. Humbert is American popular culture (vacuous and highly derivative and superficially impressive) and Lolita is the corruption of the consumer’s spirit and natural state. The novel is consciously itself a product of that culture, and being seduced by its pleasing story and tone, the reader adopts the place of Lolita – and so forms the ultimate mirror of the story. Try not to look away.”
On complicity
Kate from Melbourne wrote to answer the question of whether, as a reader, you feel complicit in Humbert Humbert’s crimes. “Yes, I do,” Kate said. “And this book tears me in two.” “It might all be a Humbert fantasy, or it might have really happened in the world of the novel, but that doesn’t matter. I can’t help but relate to Lolita, even more so now as the mother of a teenage girl,” she added.
Butterfly villains
Mairead is heading for a re-read of Lolita. She said: “I do remember enjoying the prose style and while the subject matter is dark, I think it's quite clear that we're not supposed to sympathise with Humbert.”
Interestingly, she added: “You mentioned that Nabokov was fascinated by butterflies. This made me think of the Nietzsche quote: ‘If you crush a cockroach, you're a hero. If you crush a beautiful butterfly, you're a villain. Morals have aesthetic criteria.’
“I wonder if Nabokov, if he was familiar with this quote, was playing with that idea, can Humbert 'dress up' the story enough to win us over? Even though Nabokov said he didn't like moralising in art, I think the answer is no, as we can still tell that Dolores is suffering.”
Synesthetes assemble
After Tabby took some light mocking from Dominic about her synesthesia, Wendy wrote in to say: “Yellow IS your name – I would have said the same, despite not possessing your gift. Dominic, for me, wavers between green and blue, but mostly green. I have a girlfriend who sees colours when hearing music. Dominic, I can already hear your comment…”
On the topic, Karen said: “Far from being a synesthete, I have aphantasia [the inability to voluntarily visualise mental images]. I started to reread Lolita for the first time in decades and was saddled to find some beautiful descriptions from Humbert’s mind’s eye early on.
“I put the book down in a pathetic sulk. Then I reconsidered and bought the Audible version, deciding to treat it almost as Jeremy Irons reading poetry. It’s divine. Thanks for the inspiration that gave me the determination to carry on.”
Covert art
Sophie wrote in with an observation we found interesting. “What strikes me regarding the marketing of the novel is how a minority of publishers respects Nabokov's request that the cover should be plain. Instead, many show young girls with red lips, lollipops and suggestive poses, adding to the belief of many – especially those who have not read the novel – that it advertises or excuses paedophilia. The cover of the Penguin modern classics edition, showing a nature morte, is a rare exception.”
Scoreboard
Book | Dominic’s Verdict | Tabby’s Verdict |
|---|---|---|
Lord of the Flies | 9/10 | 7/10 |
Lolita | 10/10 | 10/10 |
Rebecca | 9/10 | 9/10 |
For Whom the Bell Tolls | 7/10 | 9/10 |
Brave New World | 5/10 | 6/10 |
Next on The Book Club
If you or your book club want to read ahead, here’s what’s coming up in the podcast over the next few weeks…
September 15: A Month in the Country by J. L. Carr
September 22: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
September 29: American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
October 6: Goldfinger by Ian Fleming
October 13: The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
October 20: White Nights by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Keeping score
This week, Tabby upped her score on discussion, giving Lord of the Flies seven entitled Old Marlburians 🏫 out of 10, while Dominic gave it 9/10. But tell us what you thought.
See you next week for A Month in the Country by J. L. Carr.
The Book Club Team
