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Works :: THE HOT GATES
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 Golding himself selected the essays for this volume, first published in 1965. They include his two brilliant accounts of childhood, "Billy the Kid" and "The Ladder and the Tree", and his essay "Fable" which was specifically written to answer questions put to him about Lord of the Flies.
Golding begins the book with his essay on the Battle of Thermopylae -- the heroic last stand of the 300 Spartans under Leonidas in 480 B.C. against the entire Persian army. Golding's reasons for choosing "The Hot Gates" (the English translation of Thermopylae) as the title for the whole collection are perhaps explained by a few sentences from this essay:
"Neither you nor Leonidas nor anyone else could foresee that here thirty years' time was won for shining Athens and all Greece and all humanity."
"A little of Leonidas lies in the fact that I can go where I like and write what I like. He contributed to set us free."
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