A dazzling collection of occasional writings by the Nobel Prize-winning novelist on subjects ranging from Thermopylae to the English Channel, and from Coral Island to Jules Verne. 'A book of occasional essays which afford us many fascinating insights into Golding the man . . .It is highly individual yet profoundly modest; it has an unusual, slightly angular candour, full of painful knowledge and a beautiful humanity . . . event the slightest piece bears the mark of his rare, austere mind, his remarkable imagination . . . Even these occasional essays are enough to remind us that . . . there is not, at the moment, a writer to touch him.' New Society