He had become a follower of Rudolf Steiner, and a believer in Anthroposophy. His entire life after Oxford was spent first training and then serving as a minister of the Christian Community, a movement for religious renewal inspired by Rudolf Steiner.

Bittleston’s influence on Golding and his life was profound and often very practical. A contemporary of both men reports that while at Oxford Bittleston already believed in Golding’s exceptional gifts as a writer. It was Bittleston who showed Golding’s poems to an editor at Macmillan and Co, with the result that Golding was a published poet soon after his 23rd birthday. Once Golding had completed his Oxford degree (he took four years because he changed from science to English literature), Bittleston found him a home in London at 1001 Finchley Road, NW, then the headquarters of the Christian Community in Britain. During Golding’s stay there, Bittleston commissioned a play from him, entitled ‘Persephone’, performed by the Community. Soon after, in 1936, Golding became a teacher at the New School, Streatham (later Michael Hall), which was founded on Steiner principles. His experiences there profoundly affected the direction of his life. In Autumn 1937 he went back to Oxford to get a teaching qualification, and subsequently taught at Maidstone Grammar School in Kent and Bishop Wordsworth’s School, Salisbury.

In addition to his practical help with such matters, Bittleston showed Golding the existence of an intellectual tradition of spiritual inquiry. Golding’s own family was agnostic if not atheist, and for Golding this was not enough. Through Bittleston, conversation with him, the loan of books, and introductions to others who had religious beliefs, Golding was encouraged and enabled to explore ideas which had not really been discussed in his own home.

Bittleston and Golding stayed friends for the rest of their lives (Bittleston died four years before Golding, in 1989). There were periods during which they were not frequently in touch, but they were always important to each other. Golding’s journal says much about their friendship, and their discussions. Golding never accepted Anthroposophy, sometimes privately expressing a gentle amusement at some of its ideas. Moreover, in later life he grew less clearly religious than he had been in his early manhood and middle age. But Bittleston’s beliefs were important to Golding, as indeed they were to most of the people Bittleston knew. In Golding’s troubled times he often consulted Bittleston, and took his response very seriously. Moreover, Golding used Bittleston more directly in his writing.

In his novel, Pincher Martin (1956), he gives a portrait of Adam Bittleston in the character of Nathaniel, simply good, eccentric, tall, hopelessly unco-ordinated and utterly trusting.

His behaviour and character contrast sharply with those of the (anti-)hero Pincher. In creating Pincher, Golding made an effort to create a thoroughly evil character, and was greatly disconcerted by the number of people who then confided to him that they felt affinities with the character. Although there are points of contact with Pincher’s creator, Pincher was not a self-portrait.

One of the points of contact appears in Pincher’s time at Oxford. There are many references in his journals to Golding’s loneliness and unhappiness at Oxford. His feelings about his time there can perhaps be gathered from Pincher’s delighted welcome to his friend Nat who comes unexpectedly to visit him one lonely Sunday night. Nat has already left Oxford, and Pincher misses him.

But the characters’ later lives diverge sharply from this real-life friendship. During the war, when both characters are in the navy (Golding was in the navy but Bittleston was not), and Pincher is Nat’s superior officer, and to some degree his protector. Pincher’s downfall comes about as he attempts -- inspired by sexual jealousy -- to kill Nat. The novel, written in 1955, more than twenty years after their time at Oxford was over, uses some of Bittleston’s character (not all – real life was more complex, as their later friendship demonstrated) to point a contrast with Pincher, the evil, selfish man. While re-experiencing the contradictions of his feelings about Nat and his ideals, Pincher is forced to confront his spiritual existence, to encounter God, and suffer annihilation.

Gisela Bittleston, Ken and Ann Walsh, David Stedman, David Bromige, Floris Books and Christian Maclean, Judith Byford and Gordon Purdy.