The Spire the Novels." "A most remarkable book, as unforeseeable as one foresaw, an entire original... remote from the mainstream, potent, severe, even forbidding." – Frank Kermode, New York Review of Books, 30 April 1964. The Spire The Spire is a 1964 novel by the English author William Golding. "A dark and powerful portrait of one man's will", it deals with the construction of the 404-foot high spire loosely based on Salisbury Cathedral; the vision of the fictional Dean Jocelin. In this novel, William Golding utilises stream of consciousness writing with an omniscient but increasingly fallible narrator. Jocelin, the Dean of the
St Mary's Cathedral, Kilkenny which was sourced locally. The cathedral has a cruciform plan and its style is described as ‘Early English Gothic’. The design is believed to have been based on Gloucester Cathedral in Gloucester, England. It is situated on the highest point in Kilkenny City and is a significant local landmark. The cathedral is variously referred to as "St Mary’s", "the church of St Kieran" and "the Cathedral of the Assumption". St. Mary’s has a noted sculpture of the Madonna by Giovanni Maria Benzoni (1809-1873). St Mary's Cathedral, Kilkenny St Mary’s is the cathedral church of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Ossory.