The Spire

WINNER OF THE DUFF COOPER MEMORIAL PRIZE
Cyprus, 1953. As the island fights for independence from British colonial rule, ancient conflicts between Turkish and Greek Cypriots trouble the glittering Mediterranean waters. Into the brewing storm comes ex-pat writer Lawrence Durrell, yearning for the idyllic island lifestyle of his youth in Corfu. With his poet's eye for beauty and humour - and passable Greek - Durrell settles into a dilapidated villa and brilliantly captures the moods and atmospheres of island life in a changing world. Whether collecting folklore or wild flowers, describing the brewing revolution or eccentric local characters, this is more than just a classic travel memoir - it is an unforgettably intimate portrait of a community lost forever.

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