William Golding William Golding Sir William Gerald Golding, (19 September 1911 – 19 June 1993) was a British novelist, playwright, and poet. Best known for his novel "Lord of the Flies", he won a Nobel Prize in Literature and was awarded the Booker Prize for fiction in 1980 for his novel "Rites of Passage", the first book in what became his sea trilogy, "To the Ends of the Earth". Golding was knighted in 1988. He was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In 2008, "The Times" ranked Golding third on their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Hawksmoor (novel) beginning of the novel Dyer advises his assistant Walter to "show how the Lines [of the church plans] necessarily beare upon one another, like the Web which the Spider spins in a Closet", thus associating the churches with an insect. Dyer's pessimistic view of the world is stressed by his view of it as a "dunghill" attracting flies: "I saw the Flies on this Dunghil Earth, and then considered who their Lord might be." Ironically the occultist Dyer compares the rationalistic members of the Royal Society with flies: "The Company buzzed like Flies above Ordure". Another animal often associated with