Golding, William: - "William Golding (1911 - 1993) was born in Cornwall and educated at Oxford. In his youth he was a keen actor, lecturer, small-boat sailor, and musician. In 1940 he joined the Royal Navy, where he saw action against battleships and pursued the Bismarck; after the war, he became a schoolteacher until 1961. Golding's debut novel, Lord of the Flies, was published in 1954 after being rescued from Faber & Faber's slush pile of manuscripts, and was filmed by Peter Brook in 1963. He won the Booker Prize for Rites of Passage in 1980, and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983, as well as being knighted in 1988. Recently, the Times ranked Golding third on their list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945."