Your review of John Carey’s William Golding: The Man Who Wrote “Lord of the Flies” (London: Faber and Faber, 2009) has quite touched me (”Not a One-Trick Pony,” September 5, 2009). As you say, it is a cruel twist of fate that he is remembered for a single book of his even as a Nobel laureate in literature. Lord of the Flies (1954) is a superb book, but so is The Inheritors (1955), among others. And so surely is The Spire (1964), which has touched me more deeply than any other book by Golding. The story of Jocelin, the dean of a cathedral left without a spire who took it upon himself to erect it against all shrewd advice, remains in my mind the best example of John Maynard Keynes’ insight that little is ever accomplished by “cold calculation” alone. Jocelin’s relentless urge to build skyward is a superb example of “animal spirits” at their purest. His master builder, Roger Mason, was only a quick tool in his feverish hands. For better or worse, Golding’s exploration of the dean’s spirit was not as easy to turn into a popular movie as was his first book. Perhaps for the better, too.