The Spire is a 1964 novel by English author William Golding. "A dark and powerful portrait of one man's will", it deals with the construction of a 404-foot-high spire loosely based on Salisbury Cathedral, the vision of the fictional Dean Jocelin. In the novel, Golding utilises stream-of-consciousness writing with an omniscient but increasingly fallible narrator to show Jocelin's demise as he chooses to follow his own will as opposed to the will of God. Background The Spire was envisioned by Golding as a historical novel with a moral struggle at its core, which was originally intended to have two settings: both the Middle Ages and modern day. Whilst teaching at Bishop Wordsworth's School, Golding regularly looked out of his classroom window at Salisbury Cathedral and wondered how he would possibly construct its spire But the book's composition and eventual realisation of The Spire was not an easy process for Golding. According to his daughter, Judy Carver, Golding 'struggled like anything to write The Spire' and said that the novel 'went through many drafts'; this was perhaps owing to the fact that he had stopped teaching which, in turn, gave him more time to write. Golding first wrote fifty to sixty thousand words of a draft in February 1962 over just fourteen days and decided to take a grace period in order to finish the novel for English and American publication by December of the same year. However, by November he 'confessed that he was in "a state of misery" over the novel'. One reason for his discontent may have been Golding's longstanding 'terror of adverse criticism' as well as his editor, Charles Monteith, repeatedly asking him to co-edit an anthology of modern poetry with W. H. Auden and discouraging him from writing his own poetry collection. After a lecturing trip to America in February and March 1963, Golding found that he was still struggling to write when he returned, and worried greatly about both the novel's narrative and its relevance to a contemporary audience. As tended to be the case, Golding's fears were ultimately unnecessary; Monteith and Peter du Sautoy liked the typescript but agreed that it required editing. Golding was pleased at the news, and Monteith sent back edits which suggested splitting the novel into chapters; by 17 July 1963, Golding reported that he had reworked the first three chapters and was confident he would finish the book over