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_