Book details

'The Children of Lovers are Orphans.' Proverb Bestselling novelist, author of Lord of the Flies, William Golding was a famously acute observer of children. What was it like to be his daughter? In this frank and engaging family memoir, Judy Golding recalls growing up with a brilliant, loving, sometimes difficult parent. The years of her childhood and adolescence saw her father change from an impecunious schoolteacher to a famous novelist. Once adult, she came to understand some of the internal conflicts which led to his writing. The Golding family life, both ordinary and extraordinary, always kept its characteristic warmth, humour, complexity, anger and love, danger and insecurity. This is a book about family and parents, about lovers and their children, and about our impact on one another - for good or ill.

Judy Golding was born in Marlborough, Wiltshire, in 1945 and grew up near Salisbury, where her parents worked as teachers. She read English at the University of Sussex and St. Anne's College, Oxford, and in 1971 she married an American studying politics as Balliol. Subsequently, she worked as a copyeditor for Oxford University Press and Jonathan Cape. She and her husband have three sons and one grandson and live in Bristol.