Golding Jr gives blessing to a Lord of the Flies with less stiff upper lip

William Golding, author of Lord of the Flies, would have told his dark desert-island fable differently now, adapting it for an era almost as threatening as the one that inspired him in the 1950s, according to his daughter.

- Vanessa Thorpe Arts and Media Editor

Cast from the latest adaptation of William Golding's masterpiece. BBC/Eleven/J Redza

Judy Carver, the late Nobel Laureate’s second child, told The Observer that she sympathises with the way the new BBC television series based on her father’s famous novel has chosen to excuse the characters of the schoolboys who are marooned together. Catering to a modern audience, the screenwriter Jack Thorne, best known for Adolescence, has moved the disturbing survival narrative further away from the direct religious allegory of Golding’s vision and brought in references to psychology and childhood trauma.

“When my dad wrote the book, it was the time of ‘stiff upper lips’, and now it is the time of school counsellors,” said Carver, who manages Golding’s estate. “So it does not matter to me that the boys now each have back stories to explain their behaviour.”