An appalling read, in a way, about a large number of English schoolboys crashed on a tropical island, and how their initial attempts at organisation descend into atavism and savagery. The crucial moment is almost exactly halfway through, when Jack disrupts Ralph and Piggy’s conduct of the general meeting, and from then on the collapse of their vestigial society is inexorable and inevitable. My edition has a very stuffy introduction but some interesting notes and questions for the reader at the end, both by Ian Gregor and Mark Kinkead-Weekes. One point this provoked me to consider – is the airman at the end perhaps a figment of Ralph’s imagination? Would that actually make a more suitable ending?