The Hot Gates
Encyclopedia
William Golding
Sir William Gerald Golding was a British novelist, poet, playwright and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate, best known for his novel Lord of the Flies...
, author of Lord of the Flies
Lord of the Flies
Lord of the Flies is a novel by Nobel Prize-winning author William Golding about a group of British boys stuck on a deserted island who try to govern themselves, with disastrous results...
. The collection is divided into four sections: 'People and Places', 'Books', 'Westward Look' and 'Caught in a Bush'. Published in 1965, it includes pieces that Golding had written over the previous ten years. 'Caught in a Bush' contains his childhood recollections "Billy the Kid" and "The Ladder and the Tree", and his essay "Fable", which answered questions about Lord of the Flies appears in 'Books'. "Fable" is based on lectures Golding gave at UCLA in California and he hoped it would answer 'some of the standard questions which students were asking' (7). The book starts out with an essay on the Battle of Thermopylae
Battle of Thermopylae
The Battle of Thermopylae was fought between an alliance of Greek city-states, led by King Leonidas of Sparta, and the Persian Empire of Xerxes I over the course of three days, during the second Persian invasion of Greece. It took place simultaneously with the naval battle at Artemisium, in August...
, which can be translated from ancient Greek to English as "hot gates", thus giving it the title. Thermopylae is famous for being the place where Leonidas I
Leonidas I
Leonidas I was a hero-king of Sparta, the 17th of the Agiad line, one of the sons of King Anaxandridas II of Sparta, who was believed in mythology to be a descendant of Heracles, possessing much of the latter's strength and bravery...
made his last stand against the Persian army under Xerxes I.