(Iona Brown, the internationally acclaimed violinist, is the daughter of the late Anthony Brown, Music Master at Bishop Wordsworth's School 1941 - 1951 and later Director of Music at Canford School.)
Anthony Brown and William Golding were close friends from before the Second World War and from before their marriages. After the war William Golding often came to Anthony Brown's flat to join in the music-making offered there - as well as to share what meagre rations the post-war period entailed. A particular pleasure was for the friends to be joined by OW Maurice Handford for a performance of Benjamin Britten's Serenade for tenor, ,horn and strings - with William Golding's fine tenor voice accompanied by Maurice Handford on the horn and Anthony Brown playing the piano version of the orchestral score. Golding's musical skills were highly prized by these friends for apart from his fine tenor voice he was also an able cellist and oboist and in later years, though very modest about it, was a very proficient pianist
Both men, when married and with families, found their friendship developed as they taught at Bishop's. lona Brown recalls growing up in these "wonderful times". When the families regularly met the men would become engrossed in games of chess oblivious to their wives talking and children playing. She always remembers William Golding as a deeply complicated man. Some have thought him cynical from his writing but he wasn't. "He was so modest and with such deep passion. He was on a different level of feeling from others - so deeply involved in what he was doing. He always really wanted you to get what he was on about in conversation - sometimes during talk of a very intellectual kind. He was very close to me - my second father." At the start of her professional career lona Brown had doubts about her ability to play solo but after confiding her hopes and fears to William Golding he said "Do it, lona. Do it. If you think you can you will." It is clear that she owes a great deal to his inspiration.
Although the Browns were not - as the Goldings were - a sailing family the enduring links of music and sympathetic conversation held the friendship. Once both on the staff at Bishop's the two men's closeness could only strengthen - in music, in chess - and in mutually irreverent views of Happold the Headmaster. After Anthony Brown's death William Golding wrote his obituary for the Salisbury Journal and showed it to lona's mother Fiona who was very moved. He asked 'Is it all right?' lona felt that it was perfectly expressed: "He accepted the foibles of his friends with a wry affection. I think he felt that my father was someone who never 'cornered' him in any way."
The publication of Lord of the Flies did not strain the friendship at all. The night before its issue Anthony Brown read an advanced copy. "He couldn't put it down and read it at one go. Afterwards he said 'He's going to get the Nobel Prize one day .....' and he once told me how in the past William Golding had said to him 'I'm going to write a book - I know I can do it.' and my father had encouraged him." It was probably only to Anthony Brown that William Golding would confess the constraints of being a teacher and his dislike of aspects of it. "But he did have that charisma, that presence and a compassionate heart and a huge understanding of humanity and this came over."
The last time lona Brown saw William Golding was when he appeared during the Salisbury Festival in a public reading. She is happy that this final meeting saw him in fine form, thoroughly involved as usual in what he was doing. "'Now there's a familiar face!' he said to me in a delighted way afterwards."
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