Lord of the Flies musical choir under an established leader. With the exception of Sam and Eric and the choirboys, they appear never to have encountered each other before. The book portrays their descent into savagery; left to themselves on a paradisiacal island, far from modern civilization, the well-educated children regress to a primitive state. Golding wrote his book as a counterpoint to R.M. Ballantyne's youth novel "The Coral Island" (1858), and included specific references to it, such as the rescuing naval officer's description of the children's initial attempts at civilised cooperation as "a jolly good show, like the Coral Island". Golding's three central
Lord William Russell Also present was the novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, who subsequently wrote an anti-capital punishment essay, "On Going to See a Man Hanged". He wrote, "I came away that morning with a disgust for murder, but it was for the murder I saw done … I feel myself shamed and degraded at the brutal curiosity that took me to that spot." Soon afterwards the murder scene was portrayed in a peep-show at a travelling fair. Notes Bibliography Lord William Russell Lord William Russell (20 August 1767 – 5 May 1840) was a member of the British aristocratic Russell family and longtime