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When William Golding, the author of the coming of age allegorical classic 'Lord of the Flies', died in 1993 little was known of his personal life. This has changed due to the resurfacing of an autobiography written by Golding for his wife in order to explain how his character developed.

John Carey, the literary critic and an emeritus professor of English literature at Oxford has gained access to the reclusive author's previously unseen archive which includes two autobiographical works, three unpublished novels and a journal spanning twenty years.

As released on the Times Online, amongst the revelations is an admittance to a teenage attempted rape. After Golding's first year at Oxford, he attempted to rape a fifteen year old girl who he had met at music lessons.

Soon they were “wrestling like enemies” as he “tried unhandily to rape her”. But she resisted and Golding, all those years later, wrote that “he had made such a bad hand at rape” before shaking her and shouting “I’m not going to hurt you”.

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