Interview with Sarah Moyle: The Spire at Salisbury Playhouse

Salisbury Playhouse will be showing the first ever stage adaptation of William Golding's novel The Spire from 1st to 24th November.  We spoke to actress Sarah Moyle, who is starring in the production in a dual role, as Rachel and Lady Alison.

Prior to your casting, had you read The Spire?  Or any of Golding’s novels? 

I knew Lord of the Flies pretty well but I hadn't read The Spire. I read it as soon as I got offered the job... Not your average light holiday read but I read it whilst I was on holiday in New York.  

The book is incredibly detailed in describing the construction of the spire.  Is it difficult to portray the sheer scale of the build on the stage?

The audience will of course have to suspend a certain amount of disbelief but I think with clever staging and the set by the incredibly talented Tom Rogers, you will be able to get a sense of the scale of the project.

Have you and the other actors been inspired by your visits to Salisbury Cathedral?

We had a tour of the tower on the first day of rehearsals and I am anxious to go back now we are further along in rehearsals.  It really is awe inspiring.  I am staying in digs near the Cathedral and every day I pass it on my way to work and without fail I always look up for my day's inspiration.

You play Rachel who is one of the victims of Jocelin’s obsession with the spire.  Do you think Rachel is sympathetic to Jocelin?  Is he a character that invites empathy from the audience?

In addition to Jocelin several other characters are consumed by obsession.  Rachel is obsessed with the need to give birth; Roger is obsessed with his desire for Goody.  At first I think Rachel admires the Dean and she confides in him but as time goes on she begins to resent the obsession and the effect it has on her and her husband.  I think the audience will be torn between admiration, understanding, sympathy and horror at Jocelin’s obsession. 

Can you briefly sum up the experience so far of rehearsing The Spire?  Do you think it’s a production that will excite the audience?

What a privilege to get to tell this story in Salisbury and to be able to look out of the window of the rehearsal room and see the spire.  It is such an epic story that to tell it is a daunting prospect .  We are working hard in rehearsals and the script is evolving every day.  I do hope audiences will be excited by what we hope will be an honest, interesting and fulfilling experience. 

Sarah Moyle pictured above.

You can book tickets by following the link to Salisbury Playhouse's website

The Dreams of William Golding - Arena Documentary

‘The Dreams of William Golding’ was an illuminating, and often rather moving portrait of William Golding, directed by Adam Low.  Low was granted access to Golding’s unpublished ‘dream diaries’, read in the film by Golding’s daughter Judy, and the documentary featured a number of interviews with Golding’s family and friends, as well as archive footage of Golding himself.

            The extraordinary novels written by Golding throughout his career were given centre stage in the film; beginning with the obvious Lord of the Flies and ending with his Sea Trilogy – Rites of Passage, Fire Down Below and Close Quarters. The trilogy had been filmed by the BBC in 2005 and its award-winning star, the rather wonderful Benedict Cumberbatch, also featured in this documentary, reading extracts from Golding’s novels. 

            The programme begins with Judy Golding remembering the night Golding died, in his house in Cornwall.  She recalls that he had been drinking and at some point must have gone to his son’s room and sat on the sofa.  Judy believes he must have seen the sun from the east-facing window before he died.  Golding’s biographer, John Carey, tells how Golding couldn’t be alone at night – he always needed the light on.  This was no doubt due to his frequent nightmares which he described in his unpublished ‘dream diaries’ which amount to over two million words.  Judy reads from the diaries throughout the programme, revealing some terrifying images which clearly haunted Golding. For instance, in his entry on Dec 13 1971, Golding writes that the dream takes place at his childhood home.  His brother Jose (but not actually his brother Jose since the character in the dream is taller and stronger) has got hold of a baby and a knife.  He stretches the baby’s arms out to resemble a crucifix and begins to dissect the baby’s hands and fingers while the baby wails. Golding is terrified and revolted but can either not do anything or is too terrified to do so. He also had a recurrent nightmare in which he is hanged.

            Golding was a school teacher when Lord of the Flies was published and archive footage of him teaching his class at Bishop Wordsworth’s School in 1959 is nicely cut with modern day film of pupils at the school studying the novel. Nigel Williams, who later adapted Lord of the Flies for theatre, states that ‘the novel could only have been written by someone who had been a schoolmaster’.  We are shown the original manuscript, which had been written in a school exercise book, and the narrator reveals that much of the novel was written in school time.  Later, Golding’s pupils recalled being asked to count the words in his later manuscripts!

            Golding’s appearance on the South Bank Show in 1980 shows his preoccupation with the English class system and he reveals the class divisions of his childhood in Marlborough, Wiltshire. Presenter Melvyn Bragg recalls that Golding was just coming out of a deep depression and needed some persuasion to do the show. In 1930, Golding went to Brasenose College in Oxford where he was the only grammar school boy.  Just before graduation, the University Appointments Committee (which told graduates where their career may lie), wrote that Golding was  ‘Not top drawer’ (NTD) …  not quite a gentleman … would be all right for a day school but not a public school’.  Golding’s struggle with the inequalities in English society is later a main feature in his novel The Pyramid.

           

            The documentary does not flinch away from portraying the struggles of Golding and his family.  Judy reveals the extent of Golding’s self-loathing and resulting drinking problem and says: ‘after a while he would drink it as if he disliked it.  As if it was evil-tasting medicine’.  Judy’s older brother, David, suffered a mental breakdown whilst a student at Oxford and in the interview, David states that this was due to a ‘bio-chemical imbalance’, possibly caused by Ann Golding having contracted German measles when pregnant. Judy states that David’s life-long illness was Golding and Ann’s ‘great tragedy’ and John Carey believes that Darkness Visible was written about David.

            In 1966, an American student, Virginia Tiger, contacted Golding as she was studying his work.  He usually declined such requests but met Tiger in Salisbury.  Judy thinks that Golding fell in love with Tiger and Tiger herself felt that Golding was infatuated with her.  However, she strongly denies any kind of love affair although concedes that Golding’s wife suspected that there was.

After the family’s boat Tenace collided with another ship and after the strain Golding’s friendship with Tiger had placed on his marriage, Golding sank into a deep depression. Golding wrote in his diary that ‘life seemed pointless’ in 1971 and found it impossible to write.

            Having recovered from this desperate period of writer’s block, Golding’s novels of the late 70s and 80s were immensely successful and he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1983 and the Booker Prize in 1980 for Rites of Passage. 

            Perhaps the most impressive aspect of the documentary is the inclusion of Golding’s novels. Adam Low shows just how relevant they still are today by interspersing the readings and film footage with contemporary images. For instance, the bestselling author Stephen King reminiscences about reading Lord of the Flies in 1960.and places the book in the context of 1960s America:  civil rights unrest and the Vietnam War. He identified with the novel because of its realism: ‘The difference  [in Lord of the Flies] was that they acted like real boys’.  One of the pupils at Bishop Wordsworth's School points out that the disregard for rules and order in the novel has a striking similarity with the riots that swept across England in the summer of 2011 and Low adds news footage to illustrate this. With regard to The Spire, a novel about Dean Jocelin’s obsession with the erection of a spire, Golding says: ‘any human endeavour can never be wholly good; it must always have a cost in people.  Jocelin was a fanatic and we are in the presence of religious fanaticism.  Its cost in suffering, death and sorrow is immeasurable’.  Here, Low displays images of the 7/7 bombings and terrorist attacks; Golding’s novels, it seems, were often prophetic.

            ‘The Dreams of William Golding’ was a fascinating exploration of one of Britain’s greatest writers. Try and catch the repeat if you can!

Opening of the William Golding Display at the Bodleian, Oxford.

The William Golding display – entitled ‘Lord of the Flies and beyond’ – at the Bodleian Library opened on 4^th November and I was invited to an event to launch the exhibition the previous evening.  This was held in the strikingly beautiful and ethereal Divinity Hall, recently made famous as the location for the Hogwarts’ Infirmary in the Harry Potter movies.  [see picture]. 

            Speakers at the event included Judy Carver, daughter of Golding, who curated the exhibition, and Brian Aldiss OBE, a friend of Golding and another Faber author.  Brilliantly, during the speeches, a conch was passed around allowing the next presenter to speak! Judy talked about the process of selecting items for the display and said that she hoped it would inspire visitors to read a Golding novel other than Lord of the Flies.  Brian Aldiss, perhaps most well known as a science fiction writer, discussed his friendship with Golding; recalling that he and Golding were both Faber ‘new boys’ in the 1950s.  He paid tribute to Charles Monteith, who had been both Aldiss’s and Golding’s editor at Faber, and who famously rescued the manuscript of Lord of the Flies from the slush pile.

            The Golding display centres around Lord of the Flies and there are some stunning treasures on show.  The highlights are the original manuscript and typescript of Lord of the Flies which have never been on public display.  The hand-written version is covered in Golding’s tiny writing and seems almost incomprehensible.  Golding wrote much of the novel whilst he was a teacher in Salisbury and it is clear that the draft has been written in a school notebook!  The typescript (with added corrections in pen) lies open at one of the key incidents in the book: Simon’s encounter with the pig’s head.

            Also featured is Golding’s original submission letter to Faber and Faber on which Faber’s reader has scrawled ‘Rubbish & dull.  Pointless’.  This letter was my favourite item and its inclusion is deliciously ironic in an exhibition which celebrates a Nobel-prize winning author, who is most famous for this ‘pointless’ novel.  Charles Monteith rescued the manuscript from the rejection pile at Faber and letters between him and Golding are also on display, as is Golding’s Nobel medal.  All of his novels are featured in their original editions and I share Judy Carver’s hope that visitors will be inspired to explore some of these other works.

            Bristol Museum have loaned a conch to the Bodleian for the duration of the exhibition and excitingly, Golding may have actually seen this conch on trips to the Museum as a child.  Could this very object have inspired one of the most memorable symbols in English Literature?  It certainly is a tantalising prospect.

‘William Golding: Lord of the Flies and Beyond’ will be on display until 23^rd December at the Proscholium, Bodleian Library.

Clive Hurst, Head of Rare Books at the Bodleian and Judy Carver.

Portrait of William Golding Copyright Estate of Michael Ayrton

Conch shell, Charonia tritonis from the Indo-Pacific Ocean, kindly loaned by Bristol Museum & Art Gallery

            

Judy Golding, The Children of Lovers (Faber, 2011) – review

2011 is the centenary of the birth of the Nobel-prize-winning author William Golding and as such, this year sees a number of events and publications to celebrate the writer.  Perhaps the most welcome of these is Judy Golding’s The Children of Lovers, subtitled ‘A memoir of William Golding by his daughter’.

            To avoid confusion, and with apologies for what seems like over-familiarity, I will be referring to Judy Golding as ‘Judy’ and William Golding as ‘Golding’ throughout this review.  Strangely though, while reading the memoir, one finds oneself so closely enmeshed in Judy’s world, it feels as if you really do know her.

            Despite the categorisation of the book as a memoir, it opens with a terrifying scene – almost like the beginning of novel.  The Goldings are sailing in their boat Tenace when they collide with a huge ship which appears as a ‘sharp, grey triangle’ then becomes ‘a cliff… fifty, sixty, seventy feet above’ them (2).  Fortunately, as Tenace begins to sink, the ship returns to rescue them.  Golding insists on being the last one to climb the ladder to safety and Judy remembers shrieking ‘Daddy’ as he initially missed his footing. During the panic of the collision, Judy writes that she has never seen her father cry: ‘his face reverted to composure, another lifetime habit’ (4).  Back on dry land, in what she describes as a ‘moment of great stupidity’ (6), Judy gives her father a coil of rope she had saved from the family’s beloved boat.  This prompts Golding to burst into tears in front of the predatory journalists that are photographing the family.  Thus the reader can understand her guilt at provoking this most public breakdown.

            The book then continues in a roughly chronological order beginning with Judy’s earliest memories of her father and providing a background to her parents’ marriage.  As Judy describes it: ‘they were always by far the most important people in the world to each other, bar none, absolutely none: friends, lovers, children, grandchildren’ (7).   The title of the memoir is taken from a proverb – ‘the children of lovers are orphans’ – and Judy and her brother David were often sent to their paternal grandparents to stay (although because of their fierce arguing could not go at the same time).  Judy recognised that she was sent to Marlborough, home to her grandparents, ‘to be out of the way’ as her parents were ‘busy…they wanted to get on with things’ (49).    Shockingly, at the age of five, Judy took the bus to Marlborough by herself; the bus ride lasted for an hour and a half.  Her grandfather, Alec, did not let her travel back by herself and escorted her back to the family home.

            The relationship between the Golding family was complex.  Judy hero-worshipped her father but her feelings towards her mother were more ambivalent. At one point, she writes: ‘it was a bit like having a stepmother – not a wicked one, just someone who was naturally more interested in her relationship with her husband than she had with his children – or, at any rate, with his daughter.  I think she really was fond of David’ (27).  Despite this, David had a very difficult relationship with his father and Judy describes how unkind Golding could be at times – both to her brother and to herself.  As an adult writing this memoir, she stresses how difficult it is to reconcile the dichotomous nature of her father.  She writes: ‘I need to make these two men one – the warm embracing man I adored, and the indifferent, sometimes self-centred, occasionally cruel man, who could drink too much, could be crushing, contemptuous, defeating, deadening’ (75).  Judy’s memories of her brother’s difficulties are deeply touching, and filled with guilt that she didn’t do more to support him.  Even when she has what she calls a ‘perfect ending’ with Golding, she acknowledges that this did not happen for David (241).

            One of the most compelling aspects of the memoir is Judy’s discussion of Golding’s novels.  In 2009, John Carey published a biography entitled William Golding: The Man who wrote Lord of the Flies (Faber), which took a detached and balanced view of the subject and included exemplary, often academic readings Golding’s work.  What is so interesting about The Children of Lovers is Judy’s personal recollection of events that inspired Golding’s writing or ‘real-life’ people who ended up as characters.  Judy recalls a friend of her brother making a bonfire in their garden on which he placed her ‘nice new dolls’ pram’.  She describes Golding as being ‘darkly furious, all the more because little could be done’ (85).  Judy imagines that he ‘brooded over memories of that bonfire, with its shouting, fire-lit boys and exuberant destruction’ (85).  The boy’s name was used in Lord of the Flies and is perhaps the most sinister character – Roger.  Elsewhere, we learn that the rock in Pincher Martin is based on a tooth Golding had removed by a dentist in Fowey, Cornwall and that the character of Nick Shales in Free Fall is based on Alec, Judy’s beloved grandfather.

            There are two slightly disappointing elements in The Children of Lovers although the second of these is actually due to the brilliance of the book.  First, the photographs are fascinating but they are reproduced at the end of each chapter, rather than printed on glossy paper in the middle of the book as is more usual.  They are quite small and sometimes a little blurry; of course this may be due to the original quality.

            Second, Judy Golding writes in the acknowledgments that she ‘could have written three times as much’ – and I really wish she had.  This is to the writer’s great credit as she sweeps up along on such a poignant and engaging story.  For instance, in Chapter 15, Judy meets her father on the street in London and tells him she has been burgled; Golding turns ‘white’ with shock (213).  Judy doesn’t give us any further details about the burglary and as a reader, I wanted to ask: ‘What happened?’, ‘What was stolen?’, ‘Were the burglars ever caught?’.  But of course, this is a memoir, not an autobiography!  Although the vast majority of people will read this book because of their interest in William Golding and his writing, Judy writes with such insight and at times, in a beautifully poetic style, that the reader cannot help but be fascinated with Judy’s own story, in addition to that of her father.

            The memoir begins to come to an end at the death of Golding and Judy recollects the final evening spent with her father.  A family friend asks Golding what he would say to Judy if he knew he would never see her again. Golding’s response is to rub Judy’s neck and say ‘Love…Just love’. (241).  During that night Golding dies.  At the very end of the book, Judy’s mother tells her: ‘I did love you.  I just couldn’t show it’.  A poignant and touching end to a superbly written memoir.

The Spire - WIlliam Golding

William Golding’s fifth book, The Spire, was originally published in 1964 and, according to the blurb on Faber’s 2005 edition is ‘a dark and powerful portrait of one man’s will, and the folly that he creates’.  This description of the novel is entirely accurate.  Briefly, the novel is about a senior cleric at a cathedral in England who becomes obsessed with his vision for a spire to be built on the cathedral.  He refuses to listen to advice from the master builder, Roger Mason, who insists that the spire cannot be supported because there are no building foundations and the spire becomes known as Jocelin’s folly.  Jocelin states that the spire is ‘God’s folly’ and demands that the spire is built despite the ‘cost’.  This cost is not financial, although the funding for the spire provides an important twist in the plot.  The cost that Jocelin acknowledges is the human cost of the spire; for example, the murder of Pangall, the death of several builders, the tragedy of Goody Pangall and Roger Mason, and ultimately Jocelin’s descent into the madness of obsession and desire.   As the building reaches higher and higher, the ground under the cathedral begins to ‘creep’ and the pillars ‘sing’ under the enormous strain.  Everyone involved in the building and resident at the cathedral also become unbearably affected by the strain of this seemingly impossible task.

            I am currently re-reading The Spire just a month or so after I originally read it.  It is rare for me to read a book for the second time so close to the first but The Spire is a book that demands another reading.  It is superbly written and plotted but at times, the narrative is so subtle that only after reaching the end of the book can the reader fully appreciate Golding’s achievement.  Thus, a re-reading offers such reward in understanding the symbolism and events that one cannot fully comprehend at first.  This is one of the reasons why I highly commend and recommend this novel.

The lack of an entirely omniscient or reliable narrator allows readers to draw many of their own conclusions about incidents in the novel.  Key examples of this are the fate of Pangall, Jocelin’s desire for Goody, and the truth behind the ‘angel’ on Jocelin’s back.  The story is told in a mixture of third and first person but always from Jocelin’s point of view. However, his view of events is skewed by self-denial, his unshakeable belief in the feasibility of the spire and his utmost determination to complete his vision.  He justifies his actions throughout the novel – many of which are distinctly unfitting for a man in his position – as necessary in order to fulfil his vision of the spire.  Therefore, when Pangall, the lame and impotent caretaker, reports that the workmen employed to build the spire ‘torment’ him and warns that ‘one day, they will kill me’ (14), Jocelin fails to do anything of note to help him.  Pangall begs him to send them away but Jocelin only requests that the master builder speaks to his men and ask them to stop bullying Pangall.  It appears later that Pangall’s prediction is correct although Jocelin’s description of the event is far from conclusive as he watches the workmen chase Pangall near the pit.

He saw men who tormented Pangall, having him at the broom’s end.  In an apocalyptic glimpse of seeing, he caught how a man danced forward to Pangall, the model of the spire projecting obscenely from between his legs – then the swirl and the noise and the animal bodies hurled Jocelin against stone, so that he could not see, but only hear how Pangall broke… (90)

After this, the next we hear of Pangall is that he has ‘run away’ (92).  Jocelin occasionally wonders ‘where is Pangall’ and images of the incident by the pit run through his mind but he quickly dismisses this as ‘the cost’ of the spire (105).  It is only towards the end of the novel that the reader can finally begin to understand Pangall’s fate; and this is only revealed because of Jocelin’s madness.

After becoming concerned at Jocelin’s neglect of his religious duties and the spiralling cost of the spire, a group of church officials come to interview him, which Jocelin describes as a trial.  He begins to tell the story of the building work and declares ‘there were three sorts of people.  Those who ran, those who stayed, and those who were built in’ (166).  The Visitor asks him to elaborate on what he means about ‘people being built in’ but he cannot answer.  Later, Jocelin visits Roger Mason who has ‘turned to drink’ after his experience working on the spire.  Jocelin asks him rhetorically: ‘what holds [the spire] up Roger?  I?  The nail?  Does she, or do you?  Or it is poor Pangall, crouched beneath the crossways, with a sliver of mistletoe between his ribs?’ (212).  With this, Jocelin reveals that he ‘knows’, or at least very strongly suspects that Pangall was part of a sacrifice made by the workmen to guard against the evil of the stinking pit and the creeping ground.  A second reading of the novel elicits further clues to this; the recurring symbol of mistletoe and the workmen’s references to ‘bad luck’ and their paganism.    Although Jocelin’s insanity is so far advanced at this stage that the reader still cannot be sure if his accusation is true, it is likely that this was indeed Pangall’s fate and Jocelin knew it all along.  Thus, his failure to punish or remove the workmen is even more abhorrent.  He allows himself to be so utterly determined to complete the spire that Pangall is also Jocelin’s sacrifice.  Along with Roger Mason, who eventually attempts suicide, and Goody Pangall who dies in childbirth, Pangall represents the true ‘cost’ of the spire. 

Ultimately, Jocelin is also sacrificed.  The warmth on his back, which he often referred to as a ‘guardian angel’ is revealed to be an illness, which eventually kills him.  In keeping with the style of the narrative, the reader only discovers this through Jocelin’s rare moments of lucidity in which he hears snatches of conversations.  When he is attacked by the villagers, a woman shouts: ‘Holy Mother of God.  Look at his back’ (215).  On his deathbed he hears: ‘It is a wasting, a consumption of the back and spine’ (218).  Jocelin’s fate seems linked to that of the spire.  As the building work begins to disintegrate, the pain in his back becomes unbearable.  ‘Then his angel put away the two wings from the cloven hoof and struck him from arse to head with a whitehot flail.  It filled his spine with sick fire and he shrieked because he could not bear it yet knew he would have to’ (188).  However, as Jocelin lays dying he manages to ask of the spire: ‘Fallen?’ to which Father Adam replies, ‘Not yet’ (218).  At the novel’s conclusion, Jocelin is dead but the spire still stands.

            The Spire is a remarkable novel, filled with immense symbolism and a narrative that so finely captures the complexities of the protagonist.  It is also beautifully written; with many passages exquisitely describing the spire’s construction and potential fall.  I have included two of my favourite quotations here.  First, Jocelin’s initial response to the building work: 'There was outside and inside, as clearly divided, as eternally and inevitably divided as yesterday and today' (12).  Later, Roger Mason explains the problem of the spire to Jocelin: ‘Sooner or later there’d be a bang, a shudder, a roar.  Those four columns would open apart like a flower, and everything else up here, stone, wood, iron, glass, men, would slide down into the church like the fall of a mountain’ (118).

            Golding is, of course, best known for his debut novel, Lord of the Flies, which is regularly cited as one of the best novels ever. The Spire certainly deserves the same level of attention.