Post #1481367
2026-02-16 10:22 UTC
@j_bertolotti
William Golding was a close friend of my father’s and he often visited. Having got to know him quite well, I’m not surprised he got it so wrong. Much of it stemmed from his experiences in WWII, in particular having been on a Royal Navy warship forced to bombard a French coastal town, incurring the deaths of many civilians, for strategic reasons. It was a deep trauma for him that he never got over.
Replies (1)
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@khoji@ieji.de 2026-02-16 10:26
@j_bertolotti The other part of it was that Golding was also both a victim of and a teacher at those traditional British “public” boarding schools (actually ancient private schools for the ruling elite) where the boys were/are so brutalized that they really do behave as he depicts in Lord of the Flies.