Lord of the Flies

William Golding (1911 - 1993) was born in Cornwall and educated at Marlborough Grammar School and Brasenose College, Oxford. Before becoming a writer, he was an actor, small-boat sailor, musician and schoolteacher. In 1940 he joined the Royal Navy and took part in the D-Day operation and liberation of Holland. Lord of the Flies, his first novel, was rejected by several publishers but rescued from the 'reject pile' at Faber and published in 1954. It became a modern classic selling millions of copies, translated into 44 languages and made into a film by Peter Brook in 1963. Golding wrote eleven other novels, a play and two essay collections. He won the Booker Prize for Rites of Passage in 1980 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1983. He was knighted in 1988 and died in 1993. www.william-golding.co.uk

Martin Jarvis, often referred to as the 'wizard of the talking book', is the star of BBC 2's new comedy series, Taking the Flak. His international career encompasses Stargate Atlantis, Numb3rs andMurder She Wrote in America and David Copperfield, Morse, Much Ado and The Bill in Britain. He has starred in many West End and Royal National productions and on Broadway in By Jeeves, winning the Theatre World Award. Films include the multi-Oscar-winning Titanic. His Just William audio recordings are world wide best sellers. He is invested as an OBE for his services to the arts.