 Clive

FRSA Creative artist/photographer. Too many pies, not enough fingers Africa|Art|Books|Design|Fashion|Food|Ideas|Music|Photography|Theatre

[Rutger Bregman @rcbregman]

The BBC just released a new adaptation of Lord of the Flies, the classic novel by William Golding. It's beautifully made, but it's still telling the wrong story.

A few years ago, I went looking for the *real* Lord of the Flies. I wanted to know: has it ever actually happened? Have kids ever been shipwrecked on a deserted island?

It took me a year of research, but I found it. In 1965, six boys from a boarding school in Tonga stole a boat, got caught in a storm, and drifted for eight days without food or water. They washed up on 'Ata, a remote, uninhabited island in the Pacific. They stayed there for 15 months, and what happened on that island was the exact opposite of William Golding's novel.

These boys set up a small commune. They built a food garden, stored rainwater in hollowed-out tree trunks, created a gym with improvised weights, and built a badminton court. One of them, Stephen (who would later become an engineer) managed to start a fire using two sticks. They kept it burning the entire time.

Of course they fought too. But then they argued, they had a rule: go to opposite ends of the island, cool down, then come back and apologize. As one of them told me: ‘That's how we stayed friends.’

Back home, everyone assumed that the boys – Luke, Stephen, Sione, David, Kolo and Mano — were dead. When they were finally discovered by an Australian captain named Peter Warner, he radioed their names to Tonga. After twenty minutes, a tearful response came back: ‘You found them! These boys have been given up for dead. Funerals have been held. If it's them, this is a miracle!’

Peter commissioned a new ship, hired all six boys as his crew, and named the boat the Ata, after the island where he found them. They remained friends for the rest of their lives – Peter and Mano even became soulmates. I tracked them down, and it became one of the central chapters of my book Humankind.

Here's what struck me most: William Golding (the author of Lord of the Flies) was a troubled man, an alcoholic who once said ‘I have always understood the Nazis, because I am of that sort by nature.’ I think he was projecting his own darkness onto children. And we turned it into a lesson about human nature that we teach to millions of kids around the world.

I think the real lesson is the opposite. When real children found themselves alone on a real island, they didn't descend into savagery. They cooperated, they took care of each other, they survived.

I'm not saying that the Tongan castaways were representative of all kids everywhere. But I am saying that every kid who has to read or watch the fictional Lord of the Flies also deserves to know what actually happened when it played out in real life.

Stories are never just stories. We become the stories that we tell ourselves.

[NewsThump @newsthump]

NEWS! "Prints, Andrew" chuckles Custody Sergeant https://t.co/9uN0M2OxTO

[ Clive @clivehol]

@TheRealThelmaJ1 A wet deck

[ Clive @clivehol]

@RobinFlavell Swiss hotel clerk: “Hi Sir, you chicken out, sorry, checkin’ out?”

[ Clive @clivehol]

@HuffPost “I dream of JD’s huge erection, sorry election, victory. And would be delighted to be his couch, sorry coach.”

[ Clive @clivehol]

@TheRealThelmaJ1 He’s turning the US into the Unwelcoming Shithole

[ Clive @clivehol]

@RonFilipkowski Is he in training for the Enhanced Games?

[ Clive @clivehol]

@CamillaTominey Quick, Camilla, look up. There's the point, it's just flying over the top of your head

[ Clive @clivehol]

@RonFilipkowski And definitely nothing like the sleazy 'forbidden place of darkness' NYC portrayed in the film Midnight Cowboy by up-and-coming (quite literally in one scene) actor... Jon Voight!

[ Clive @clivehol]

@asemota Led by born-again leftie Marjorie Taylor Greene 😂

[ Clive @clivehol]

@DrJoeAbah @asemota Actually none are German. Bose is American (owned by MIT), B&O is Danish although the automotive products are owned by Harmon Kardon, which is South Korean owned. Sennheiser is German but the consumer division was sold to the Swiss

[ Clive @clivehol]

@RonFilipkowski So if someone leases land from him and opens a brothel, using the same logic that makes Bessent a pimp. I somehow doubt he’d claim to feel the sex workers’ pain, though.

[ Clive @clivehol]

@PM_ViktorOrban @donaldtusk We all saw what you were planning when you amassed your troops on the Ukraine border waiting for your hero Putler to successfully complete his 3-day takeover. You’ve put yourself so far up his arse you can’t extricate yourself and deserve to lose the upcoming election bigly

[ Clive @clivehol]

@rauchg ‘Enjoying’ hanging out with a war criminal whose army uses AI to ‘empower’ their genocidal murderers to target civilians is more likely to disempower your company’s reputation

[ Clive @clivehol]

@asemota There was a similar issue in South Humberside when the ‘Welcome to Scunthorpe’ illuminated sign malfunctioned 😉

[ Clive @clivehol]

@mariana057 @AbangMercy I hear that, as treasury secretary, Billy will be looking after the books

[ Clive @clivehol]

@Otto_English @whoisbobbparris Yeah, turns out even the original ‘English’ Neanderthals were African immigrants just like those Johnny-come-lately English Homo Sapiens

[ Clive @clivehol]

@ZiaYusufUK @Nigel_Farage So the main who railed against the EU being run by unelected bureaucrats plans to run the UK with a team of , er, unelected bureaucrats.

[ Clive @clivehol]

@LindseyGrahamSC With Rodrigo Borgia as his role model

[ Clive @clivehol]

@WhiteHouse @elonmusk