The spire

In the 14th century, when men broke their backs and lost their lives toiling with stone to build the great cathedrals, Den Jocelin is visited by an angel who tells him to erect a spire upon a building that has no foundations. Despised as a lunatic and self-deceiver, Jocelin's will forces the spire upwards, course by course, until the pillars begin to sing and the earth to crawl. Golding's exposition of one man's struggle with the noble and ignoble sides of his nature confirmed him in 1964 as a writer of fantastic imaginative power, and the magic of this book is still extraordinarily potent to me today. (_Kirkus (UK)_ )

A paperback edition of a novel first published in 1964 which presents a portrait of one man's possessed will, and of the towering folly he creates.