'Visionary.' Bettany Hughes
'Tremendous.' Ben Okri
'Luminous.' Rose Tremain

Even when he leapt from the parapet he talked.

Ancient Egypt. The Prince is set to marry Pretty Flower, his sister, in the Great House's incestuous society. But the Liar speaks a truth that transforms everything .

A primitive matriarchal society. While mothers raise children in the bucolic Place of Women, Chimp is tormented by the Leopard Men in their brutal hunts, until he gains new wisdom .

Imperial Rome. In an era of invention and exploration, the emperor realises he loves his illegitimate grandson more than his own loutish heir .

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.

Charlotte Higgins is an author and chief culture writer for the Guardian. Most of her books are about the classical world: Under Another Sky was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson (now Baillie Gifford) Prize, among other awards, and has been adapted for the stage by David Greig; Red Thread won the Arnold Bennett prize; and her latest, Greek Myths, with illustrations by Chris Ofili, was shortlisted for the 2021 Waterstones Book of the Year.