Programme Index

Discover 11,128,835 listings and 279,851 playable programmes from the BBC

The Essay

Open Endings

Ian Rankin on Lord of the Flies

Duration: 14 minutes

First broadcast: on BBC Radio 3Latest broadcast: on BBC Radio 3

Available for over a year

Five leading writers pick a novel they love and then write an original piece of fiction imagining what happened to the characters after the story ends.

In the first essay of the series, the crime writer Ian Rankin picks William Golding's Lord of the Flies. Like many students, Ian first encountered the novel at school but certain scenes and moments have stayed with him for the past 40 years. In this essay, Ian explores his relationship with the work as a teenager of the 1970s and imagines what might have happened to two of the shipwrecked boys, Ralph and Jack, once they reach adulthood.

Producer: Camellia Sinclair Show less

About this data

This data is drawn from the data stream that informs BBC's iPlayer and Sounds. The information shows what was scheduled to be broadcast, meaning it was/is subject to change and may not be accurate. More