John Carey's biography William Golding: The Man who Wrote Lord of the Flies will be published by Faber and Faber on 3 September 2009. Professor Carey has had unrestricted access to the Golding Family Archive, including Golding's unpublished writings, and has been given information by many friends and members of Golding's family. He provides a rich, sympathetic and honest portrait of this complex and gifted man, a portrait with many surprises.

In 1953, William Golding was a provincial schoolteacher, writing books in his breaks, lunch hours and holidays. His work had been rejected by every publisher he sent it to – until an editor at Faber pulled his manuscript off the rejection pile. This was to become Lord of the Flies, a book that would sell in its millions and bring Golding worldwide recognition. Drawing almost entirely on materials that have never before been made public, John Carey sheds new light on Golding. Through hundreds of letters, unpublished works and Golding's intimate journals, Carey draws a revelatory and definitive portrait of an extraordinary man. In an absorbing and compelling narrative, he reveals a many-sided figure: a war-hero, a reclusive depressive who considered himself a ‘monster', a family man, a victim of fears and phobias who battled against alcoholism, and a writer who trusted the imagination above all things.

John Carey is Emeritus Merton Professor of English Literature at Oxford University, a Fellow of the British Academy and Chief Book Reviewer for the Sunday Times. His books include studies of Donne, Milton, Thackeray and Dickens, The Intellectuals and the Masses and What Good Are the Arts?

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