Lord of the Flies by William Golding

This is a harrowing story that has as its central idea that we western humans are not the civilised beings we imagine ourselves to be. In the story, an aeroplane of schoolboys – no girls – crashes. Only the children survive and find themselves marooned on a tropical island. They have to work out what to do to survive. The book portrays their descent into savagery; left to themselves on a paradisiacal island, far from modern civilisation, the well-educated children regress to a primitive state.

I read this book when I was in Year 9 and although I have seen some amazing acts of kindness and selflessness in the years since then, I have also seen enough to make me think that William Golding is probably right in his assessment. This is not a fun read but it might make you resolve to work harder at being helpful.

Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransom

“BETTER DROWNED THAN DUFFERS IF NOT DUFFERS WON’T DROWN”

I was born in Barrow-in-Furness but left before I could talk. We moved round the country regularly. The only fixed thing in my life was coming to Barrow and the Lake District two or three times a year. This book helped me to pretend that I had a home here. It concerns 2 sets of children on holiday in the south of Cumbria between the wars and the adventures they got up to in the days before iPads and Facebook. You wouldn’t be allowed to do what they did – too dangerous. But the telegram quotation at the top in which their father gives them permission to sail on the lake on their own could be applied to anybody’s life, in my opinion. This is a book for younger children but I still go back to it. I want to live like they did.

They made a film of it this summer that also included aspects of Arthur Ransome’s amazing life. He was a spy during the Russian revolution, but was he working for us or them?