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The British House of Commons voted on legislation today that intended to make it an offense to use words inciting religious hatred

Leading British writers and comedians have welcomed the defeat of a proposed religious hatred law, which they say would have stifled freedom of speech.

Comedian Rowan Atkinson said he was pleased the right to "criticise and ridicule" religions was not banned.

Authors Salman Rushdie, Philip Pullman and Hanif Kureishi also celebrated the government's narrow defeat.

The law will still come into effect, but will be a watered-down version of the bill the government had wanted.

It will be illegal to intentionally use "threatening" words and behaviour to stir up hatred, but saying things that are merely critical, abusive or insulting will not be an offence.

Blackadder star Atkinson said: "I could not be more pleased with the final version of the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill that has now passed through Parliament.

'Right to criticise'

"With it, it seems to me, everybody wins. Those who seek to threaten religious communities will know that such behaviour has now been outlawed.

"And those who have sought to retain the right to criticise and ridicule religious beliefs and practices now have those rights enshrined in legislation in a manner never previously achieved."

Atkinson previously said he would no longer be able to write sketches such as one set in a mosque that he wrote for Not the Nine O'Clock News.

It showed Muslims at prayer, bowing to the ground with a voiceover saying: "And the search goes on for the Ayatollah Khomeini's contact lens."

Salman Rushdie was forced into hiding when Iran imposed a death sentence, believing he insulted the prophet Mohammed in his 1989 book The Satanic Verses.

"There are moments when one is profoundly grateful for, and proud of, British parliamentary democracy," he said. "This is one of them."

Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials novels tell of a battle against the church and a fight to overthrow God.

The House of Commons vote showed "thoughtful argument, skilfully deployed in the service of a good cause, can still beat arrogant short-term political jerry-building", Pullman said.

"The episode also shows that if we want to guard freedom of expression, we can't relax our vigilance for a minute.

'Soft luxury'

"Those who think such freedom is a soft luxury, and well worth giving up in order to curry favour with whatever group has the votes they want, will come back another day and from another direction in order to destroy it.

"Those of us who know it's a hard necessity must be ready for them."

The Buddha of Suburbia author Hanif Kureishi added: "This is an amazing result and a great achievement for writers and intellectuals when they unite."

And National Theatre artistic director Nicholas Hytner, who staged controversial musical Jerry Springer - The Opera, said the government had been "too ready to sacrifice" freedom of expression.

'Disappointment'

"The government should now rise to the occasion and demonstrate its stated opposition to religious discrimination by repealing the blasphemy laws," he said.

But Labour MP John Denham, chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, said the defeat meant Christians and Muslims would not be protected in the way Jews and Sikhs are through current race laws.

Britain's first Muslim MP, Labour's Mohammed Sarwar, said the result would be a disappointment to those of all faiths.

He said: "It would have been beneficial not only to Muslims but to those of other faiths and of none. It is very unfortunate."

[

Oxford provided CS Lewis and his illustrious colleagues with inspiration for their fantasy worlds. Max Davidson takes stock.

I am sitting in a pub in Oxford, nursing a pint of warm bitter and getting stuck into a plate of bangers and mash. Not much new there, then. But the pub is no ordinary pub, even if the bitter and the bangers are. The little room where I am sitting, at the back of the Eagle and Child, is a holy place in the annals of English literature.

In this room, every Tuesday morning between 1939 and 1962, a group called the Inklings met to discuss, among other things, the books they were writing.

Note the years, then note the two best-known members of the Inklings: JRR ("Ronald") Tolkien, later professor of English at Oxford, and CS ("Jack") Lewis, fellow of Magdalen College.

As war raged in Europe, two of the finest minds in the country were incubating novels of pure escapism: fantastic tales in which children could walk through the backs of wardrobes and creatures with sticking-out ears roamed across Middle Earth.

An intriguing paradox about Oxford is that the most famous university in the world, a byword for rational debate, has also spawned more "irrational" writers - by which I mean those prepared to jettison realism for fantasy, aimed at children of all ages - than anywhere else on the planet.

Before the Inklings came Charles Dodgson, the Christchurch mathematics don who reinvented himself as Lewis Carroll and wrote Alice in Wonderland. Kenneth Grahame, author of The Wind in the Willows, was educated in Oxford, where he is also buried.

And the link between Oxford and children's authors endures to this day. Philip Pullman, author of the series His Dark Materials, lives in Oxford, as does Mark Haddon, who wrote The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

It is an impressive list and, if there is no single easy-to-access museum or library where you can study this odd symbiosis between Oxford and children's literature, you certainly feel you are hot on the scent in the Eagle and Child, one of the those quintessential Oxford pubs, with wood-panelled walls, low ceilings and a smell of overcooked carrots.

In 1939, there would also have been a thick pall of cigarette smoke - CS Lewis was a 60-a-day man.

There is a plaque on the wall commemorating the Inklings and the fact that, when not talking about their books, they "drank Beer". How I love that artless capital B! You can glimpse a whole world behind it.

Next to the plaque, there is a framed hand-written letter, signed by the Inklings and, by the look of it, written when they were sloshed.

"We, the undersigned," it begins, "having just partaken of your house, have drunk your health."

The CS Lewis signature is very ragged: in my expert opinion, the signatory must have drunk between four and five pints.

The Tolkien one is steadier: perhaps he had arrived late or had a better head for drink. The addressee is one Charles Blagrove, landlord of the Eagle and Child, one of the great Oxford eccentrics, a man with a wealth of stories about the pre-war Brideshead era that Hitler had consigned to history.

The year of the letter is 1948 and that, too, is significant.

In that year, Lewis finished the first draft of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the first of the Narnia novels, which he read aloud to Tolkien - who absolutely hated it.

He was more of a purist than Lewis and found the jumbling together of elements from different mythologies - Aslan, the White Witch, Father Christmas, fauns and nymphs, Mr and Mrs Beaver - very unsatisfactory.

Were voices raised here, in this very room, as they argued about the book? Did a little bit of literary fur fly over the warm English bitter? One likes to think so.

"My dear Jack, you can't have a lion, a witch and a wardrobe. It's too much, old chap, too much."

"Are you sure, Ronald? I am rather partial to that wardrobe. I thought it was dashed clever."

"Quite sure, old chap. The secret of fantasy writing is simplicity."

At which point, one imagines Lewis, a kinder man than Tolkien and, for my money, a far better writer, biting his tongue and thinking to himself: "Bloody hell! Why should I take lessons from the man who wrote that pretentious tosh about the Hobbit?" And then back to the beer with the capital B and a gossip about fellow dons.

There is a nice photograph on one of the walls of Lewis with Joy Gresham - who will be familiar to anyone who saw the film Shadowlands. Joy was the American woman friend he married in 1956, to protect her from extradition, then fell in love with, as she was dying of cancer.

They make a far less glamorous couple than Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger in the film. Joy is bespectacled, dumpy. Jack looks awkward in tight-fitting tweeds. But perhaps the photo captures what Hollywood could not: the prosaic tenderness of the relationship.

The photograph was taken at The Kilns, the rambling redbrick house in Headington, two miles from the city centre, where Jack lived with his elder brother, Warren, or "Warnie". The developers have transformed Headington, which is no longer the semi-rural paradise that it would have been in the 1940s and 1950s.

The Kilns itself, owned by the CS Lewis Foundation, a California-based organisation dedicated to the furtherance of Christian scholarship, is now a study centre. But a little of the flavour of the area lingers.

If you are a Narnia buff, it is definitely worth making a short pilgrimage to Headington Quarry Church, where Jack and Warnie are buried.

The grave is a simple stone slab, with a cross and a line from King Lear: "Men must endure their going hence."

The fact that the brothers were born and brought up in Belfast, which is easy to overlook, is recorded. And note, by the way, the date that CS Lewis died - November 22 1963, the day Kennedy was assassinated. With Aldous Huxley dying in California on the same day, obituary editors must have been tearing their hair out.

Inside the church, designed by Sir Gilbert Scott, there is a plaque marking the pew where Jack and Warnie worshipped, for more than 30 years, and a fine Narnia window, featuring Aslan the Lion.

Where did Narnia come from?

The question is susceptible to so many answers that it is probably foolish to pose it. But one of the answers, surely, must be the wartime Oxford in which Lewis and his fellow Inklings lived.

It must have been an odd, twilight world, with so many young men away at the war. The pre-war rituals of tutorials and toasted crumpets and punting on the river must have seemed arid; while the horror stories emerging from Nazi Europe would have been unbearable to a sensitive man like Lewis.

He was a devout Christian, though not a pacifist, and joined the Home Guard, with which he tramped around the city with a rifle, following the bidding of the local Captain Mainwarings. Was he a Sergeant Wilson or a Private Godfrey? A bit of both, no doubt.

More significantly, he placed his large house in Headington at the disposal of children who were being evacuated from London. Never having married or had children of his own, he enjoyed their company more than he expected. One of them, a small girl, took an interest in one of his wardrobes and asked if she could go inside it...

While Hitler was laying waste Europe, a writer associated with academic books about literature and theology turned his thoughts to strange new worlds, where goodness could be triumphant.

Oxford basics

The Eagle and Child Pub, at 49 St Giles, in the centre of Oxford, is open daily, noon -11pm. Magdalen College, where CS Lewis was a fellow, is open daily, 1-6pm. Admission:

Philip Pullman

The show has been written by Adrian Hodges, who also penned television hits David Copperfield, Lorna Doone and the Bafta-winning series Charles II - The Power and the Passion. Hodges is currently working on ITV1

The Archbishop of Canterbury has extended to the wider Church his plea for Christians to engage with unbelievers.

Dr Rowan Williams, who in March took part in a public debate on atheism, said Christians could make it easier to persuade unbelievers if they were a

This is a quite hostile article, mentioning Philip Pullman as follows: "It is not just the infantile obsession of Philip Pullman with poisoning the minds of children against Catholicism, in a very Anglo-Saxon, Popish Plot kind of way."

Easter has been infused with more of a religious atmosphere than has been usual in recent years, due to the interest generated by Mel Gibson

That small cavil apart, Gibson is to be thanked for giving the world so eloquent a testimonial to the cosmic drama around which the Christian faith revolves. It is much needed: never, since the early days of persecution, has Christianity been more beleaguered. A glimpse of our city centres during the past two nights would convey how the greatest festival in our religious heritage was celebrated by the younger generation and what hope that affords for the future.

Never has there been so much expression of anti-religious opinion in the media, nor so venomous an aggression against every vestigial remnant of the Judaeo-Christian ethic. It is not just the infantile obsession of Philip Pullman with poisoning the minds of children against Catholicism, in a very Anglo-Saxon, Popish Plot kind of way. It is more the active hostility of such bodies as the European Union - willing to proclaim the pagan heritage of classical Greece in its proposed constitution, but adamant in its refusal to acknowledge the Christian faith that has moulded its culture during two millennia.

Around the developed world, it is clear that aggressive secularist lobbies are now assailing Christianity. By the imposition of so-called anti-hate laws and enforcement of ethical aberrations abhorrent to Christians, believers are to be presented with the stark alternatives of coming to a self-serving accommodation with the forces of evil, or incurring legal and social penalties amounting to persecution. How many will stand up to be counted? Religion has been so diluted that it would be unsurprising if the reaction of many young people today to the drama of Calvary was indignation at the ecological irresponsibility of destroying three trees.

The world of paganism, just as it was before the original triumph of Christianity, is bleak. For all its token deference to the interests of the weak, it is a devil-take-the-hindmost, bread-and-circuses society in which the unborn are torn from the womb and, increasingly, the elderly infirm are to be killed off for the convenience of the young and active. Even some people of no religious affiliation are becoming alarmed at the violence and disorder of a society lacking any moral compass.

Spearheaded by the media, all decency and reticence are being trampled down. Among the young, in particular, where parents (if they have any) have abdicated their responsibility,

Ok, this is not exactly "news", but take a look at the website Aurora Webcam.com which has pictures & videos of auroras and a webcam from Fairbanks, Alaska.

The His Dark Materials.org staff would like to offer our condolences to the victims of yesterdays terrorist attacks in Spain.

Click here for information about these atrocities.

Take a bow, Frodo. Hobbits and elves, wizards and witches are our new idols.

Middle Earth has been certified. The American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has fenced it in with a ring of golden statuettes. On Sunday night the roll call of honours for Peter Jackson

Psychoanalysts and professors of literature are best qualified to account for the current revival of the fantasy genre. Yet, at a time when non-fiction is threatening to outsell fiction, fantasy is the genre where the edges are being pushed by a feisty generation of storytellers

Since it's the first thing most "Lord of the Rings" fans want to know, let's get it out of the way up front.

No, Kristin Thompson didn't get to interview director Peter Jackson. But she did get to spend an hour in the same room with him while he was mixing sound for the giant spider sequence in "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King."

"It was a real treat," says Thompson, a film scholar and honorary fellow with the University of Wisconsin-Madison's communication arts department. "It was obviously one of the high points of my visit."

That visit was a four-week trip that Thompson took to New Zealand last year, doing research and interviews for a book she's writing on the "Lord of the Rings" phenomenon and what it means to modern filmmaking.

The book, which Thompson hopes will be out in spring of next year, won't be the kind of glossy infotainment publication you might find in a comic book store. It'll be a serious academic text that will look at, among other things, the globalization of film production, the profitable intersection between film and video games, and changes in the ways films are distributed around the world.

"I'm not the only one," Thompson says of her project. "There are at least four other book-length academic projects that I know of. This is going to be with us as an academic franchise as well as a film franchise."

"Return of the King," the third installment in the film trilogy based on J.R.R. Tolkien's seminal fantasy series, has earned a billion dollars in global box office receipts and is the heavy favorite to win the Oscar for Best Picture at the Academy Awards this Sunday. (The awards show will air at 7 p.m. on WKOW-TV/Channel 27.)

If it does win Best Picture, Thompson thinks it will make some naysayers sit up and take notice of the film as more than just popular entertainment.

"There is this sort of lingering perception, I think, especially among academics and educated people, that this is somehow just a teenage blockbuster fantasy film and that's it," she says. "If it finally does win a bunch of Oscars, and I think it's very likely, there's going to be people who will take a closer look at it and will finally be willing to give it a chance."

Thompson, who is also an Egyptologist, has written extensively on film in the past, including her 1990 book "Storytelling in the New Hollywood." But her concentration has mostly been the silent film era, and since those involved in those films are all deceased, her research consisted largely of visiting film archives and other historical repositories around the world.

Researching and writing about a movie that was not only current, but in the process of being filmed, was a much different experience, she says.

For one thing, she had to navigate a labyrinth of obstacles created by the studio, New Line Cinema, and the Tolkien estate to get permission to interview key players, tour the studios and research the book.

Fortunately, Thompson met producer Barrie Osbourne through a mutual acquaintance. Osbourne liked the idea of the book and ended up championing Thompson's involvement, helping to facilitate interviews and tours and explain Thompson's project to others.

The "Lord of the Rings" trilogy was made almost entirely in New Zealand, and all three films were shot back to back, which Thompson says was both a financial gamble and an economical way of making three movies. She spent a month in the city of Wellington while the film was in post-production. While there she conducted more than a dozen interviews, toured some of the locations used in the films and got to see some orcs being filmed for computer-generated background shots.

"It really was quite as wonderful and exciting an experience as you might expect," she says.

With the Tolkien trilogy wrapped up, Thompson says studios are busily optioning up fantasy literature that they hope will be the next "Rings," including C.S. Lewis' "The Chronicles of Narnia" and Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials."

Thompson is planning a follow-up trip back to New Zealand this year to finish researching the book. And she hopes that a sit-down with Jackson will finally be in the cards.

"I definitely would like to get some time," she says. "I'm now one degree of separation away; I have his assistant's e-mail address and phone number. I'm sort of assuming that I will be going back at some point at his convenience."

[

Locking down a deal that has been brewing since fall, New Line Cinema has acquired rights to develop bestselling German children's author Cornelia Funke's hotly pursued novel "Inkheart" as a potential kids fantasy franchise.

Now that "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy is complete, New Line has been casting its net for another multi-installment fantasy blockbuster. "Inkheart" joins development project "His Dark Materials," based on Philip Pullman's novels, among likely contenders.

Deal also covers the subsequent two volumes in Funke's planned trilogy and was announced by New Line production prexy Toby Emmerich, capping extended negotiations in which a number of major studios were involved.

"Inkheart" is an adventure story about a young girl whose father has the power to bring characters from books to life by reading those books aloud. When a power-hungry villain from a rare children's fable kidnaps the man, his daughter bands with a group of friends both real and imagined to set things right.

"It's the perfect segue from 'Lord of the Rings' to 'Inkheart,' " New Line exec VP Mark Ordesky told Daily Variety. "Apart from Cornelia's huge status within Europe, her international popularity is only just beginning to crest."

"Inkheart" was published in the U.S. in the fall and has spent 19 weeks on the New York Times Children's Chapter bestseller list. Second part of the trilogy, "Inkblood," recently was delivered for English translation and will be published worldwide day-and-date next year. Funke has not yet completed the final installment.

The deal marks the second film project to spring from Funke's work after magic thriller "The Thief Lord," which is being backed by Warner's international arm as a European production, with Richard Claus producing.

Ordesky and Fine Line Features senior VP of European production and acquisition Ileen Maisel will oversee production of "Inkheart" for the studio, with Funke serving as a producer. Ordesky and Maisel also are shepherding "His Dark Materials," based on a Tom Stoppard screenplay.

New Line senior exec VP of business and legal affairs Ben Zinkin negotiated the "Inkheart" acquisition with Funke's reps.

New Line also has been circling a first-look deal for film, television and stage rights to all books from Brit imprint Chicken House, which publishes Funke's novels in English-speaking territories, including the U.S., where the label goes out through Scholastic. In addition to Funke, Chicken House publisher Barry Cunningham was responsible for getting "Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling into print at London house Bloomsbury.

While other companies including Miramax are involved in negotiations for the overall deal, the "Inkheart" pact could now make New Line the front runner.

[

A year on from the release of the first movie in his The Lord of the Rings trilogy it's clear that Peter Jackson's great gamble hasn't just paid off big time, it's also had an effect far beyond the cash registers.

Yes, the first film has made US$850 million-plus (NZ$1.7 billion) - already paying for the whole trilogy nearly twice over - and probably half as much again with its DVD releases and merchandise. And there has been a huge upsurge in sales of J.R.R. Tolkien's printed works, too.

But it has changed things other than bank accounts. It has done wonders for the acceptance of DVDs while reminding that some movies need to be seen on the big screen first.

Films of C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia and Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy are now underway, the former being directed by expatriate New Zealander Andrew Adamson.

That Tom Cruise's period epic The Last Samurai is taking over parts of Taranaki early next year is undoubtedly a result of the Rings' success.

Costume designer Ngila Dickson, who features in this special souvenir edition, is working on the Cruise film, as is the Weta Workshop headed by double Oscar winner Richard Taylor who talks about the new aspects of The Two Towers in the following pages.

Arguably the best thing that The Lord of the Rings has done - and will continue to for years - is give pop

culture a brain again. It has proved you can be big and still be beautiful. Here, it has also affected cardiac systems with those constant surges of pride.

It's changed how we see ourselves a little. It's given us something new with which to impress - or bore silly - foreign friends. Something to add to the "that's-us" list, the one which used to begin with Sir Edmund Hillary and then head directly to sports.

Now it's time for those hearts to pound again for the second film, a reportedly darker, bloodier more physical affair than the first and one which departs from the book more markedly, too.

[

This article is a bit of a rip-off from this article. The big difference is that this article says 'kidults' read HDM and the other article said they read Harry Potter.

THEY wear Nike trainers, spend hours on their PlayStation2, are obsessed by Harry Potter and can often be seen parking their micro-scooters outside Topman.

This may sound like a fashion-conscious teenager - but it's more likely to be an "adultescent", the new breed of 40-something who's determined not to grow up.

The internet and the explosion in TV channels has helped create this phenomenon, according to advertising expert Richard Exon.

"Not long ago, when you hit 40 it was time for slippers and a Labrador. But not any more."

Richard, advertising director with agency BBH, adds: "The web means that everyone is more aware of the latest fashions, films and music - so parents are likely to be just as trendy as their children."

Adultescents - or kidults - include Jerry Hall, Nicky Haslam, Jeremy Irons, Fatboy Slim, Richard Madeley and even Bill Clinton.

Madeley is a prime example of this new breed of man.

He may be 47 but that didn't stop him adopting a look most 20-somethings would have been proud of.

Just a few years ago, today's adultescent would have been wearing a bottle-green V-neck sweater and driving a people carrier with Cliff Richard at a sensible volume on the stereo.

Today, they're more likely to be rocking in an Audi TT or Volkswagen Beetle - cars which appeal to the inner-child.

FATBOY Slim, 40, may be a father but he still rides a micro-scooter along Brighton seafront, while Fender Strat-strumming Tony Blair rolled back his 50 years to wear a youthful maroon suit on a trip to India last year.

The notion that age is not a number but a state of mind is supported by the facts, which point to an increasing number of adults reverting to a second childhood.

In 1990, for instance, the average video-game player was a youthful 18 - now they're 29.

In last year's Big Read poll, a third of the 21 books in the final were written for children but mainly voted for by adults. Last week, the children's book The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time won the Whitbread Prize.

At the same time, books such as JK Rowling's Harry Potter series and Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials have helped double the number of adults reading children's books.

Adultescent buying patterns have caused ripples in the high street, where they're snapping up clothes aimed at teenagers.

A Topman spokeswoman says: "Our key target is 15- to 25-year- olds but we're seeing more and more 40-somethings coming into stores. Traditional age barriers are coming down fast."

Yet while this new breed sees nothing wrong in spending more time playing Grand Theft Auto III than their children, some experts think it may be harmful.

"Nostalgia for childhood might seem fun but it is symptomatic of a profound insecurity about the future," says sociologist Frank Furedi, of the University of Kent.

Philip Hodson, of the British Association Of Counselling And Psychotherapy, is also worried.

HE says: "When parents assume the same sort of role as their children, start to act like them and mix with their friends, it is a sign that something is lacking in their own lives."

But while the middle-aged are acting their Nike-clad shoe size, the young are putting aside childish things in a bid to get ahead.

Increasing numbers of 20-somethings are landing jobs earlier and working harder as they try to emulate the success of entrepreneurs such as Martha Lane Fox or Bill Gates, who both broke through at a young age.

Once again, there's a negative aspect, with evidence that this go-get-it lifestyle could be contributing to the rising tide of mental illness.

Figures from the Office For National Statistics show the number of 25-to-34-year-olds being treated for depression is rising 10 per cent year on year.

Nick Baylis, a psychologist and lecturer at Cambridge University believes he knows why.

"Fears for the future, job and financial insecurity and the 'work hard, play hard' mentality are forcing young people to toil in a neurotically hard and grown-up way to achieve what they think will be satisfaction."

So it seems the tables have turned completely.

People who should know better are enjoying a second childhood, while youngsters seem intent on giving their "first" childhood a miss.

__________

WHO ARE WE TALKING ABOUT?

TONY BLAIR, 50

THE Prime Minister still acts like a man half his age. Attempts to recapture his youth include becoming a dad for the fourth time in 2000 and strumming his Fender Stratocaster wearing blue jeans.

RICHARD MADELEY, 47

NOT content with a new tousled haircut and open-neck shirt, the daddy cool of daytime TV has taken to growing stubble and wearing leather jackets to film premieres. Please make it stop.

MADONNA, 45

POSING with Missy Elliott for a Gap ad wasn't enough for Madge - she then snogged Britney at the MTV awards.

HARRISON FORD, 61

Old Indiana acquired an earring and a Harley-Davidson when he started dating actress Calista Flockhart, 22 years his junior.

PAUL McCARTNEY, 61

HE married Heather Mills, 25 years his junior, dyed his hair and tried to tap into yoof culture by moving next door to Fatboy Slim.

GRAHAM NORTON, 40

THE camp entertainer has clearly decided that outrageous suits are his trademark. But the older he gets, the more desperate they appear.

JERRY HALL, 47

After ditching Jagger, the model hooked up with Tim Attias, 10 years her junior, and then Benedict Allen, 43. She models for teen chain, H&M.

BILL CLINTON, 57

Like a kid ready for a big date, he's on the South Beach diet to keep young. A Red Hot Chili Peppers' fan, he mixes with Bono.

__________

WHAT THEY WATCH..READ..LISTEN TO..PLAY..BUY..WEAR..SEND..SHOP FOR..

FILM: Finding Nemo

BOOK: Pullman

BAND: White Stripes

GAME: Hawks Skateboarding

WATCH: G-Shock

TRAINERS: Nike

MOBILE: Texts

CLOTHES: Gap

[

This article is about kidults. Adults who just don't want to believe that they are adults. It's not very HDM Related except for a part which is about the stageplay.

Everybody loves Levi's, the White Stripes, Harry Potter - and that's the problem. What can today's teenagers claim for their own when their parents won't let go of being cool?

As the White Stripes took to the stage at Brixton Academy in London last week, they looked at first glance like the hottest rock band of the day, playing to a typical young crowd. In red and black outfits and bowler hats, Jack and Meg White strummed and drummed to pogo-ing teenagers. But back in the 'seated ticket' area, was a quite different group of fans - contented mid-thirties couples in comfy jumpers and Hush Puppies, old punks, middle-aged musos and suited blokes straight from the office.

Up the road in a very different venue the crowd was a similar mix of generations for the National Theatre's adaptation of Philip Pullman's trilogy His Dark Materials, hailed as 'an epic of the crossover genre - a children's book with adult appeal'. And also in London last week a mixed-age audience watched the Whitbread Prize for Literature being accepted by Mark Haddon for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, the first children's novel to win the prize. Teenagers and parents celebrated its success together.

A few years ago youngsters would have done almost anything to avoid being seen out with their parents. An outbreak of 'Dad-dancing' or a 'Mum, that's sooo embarrassing' fashion disaster would have meant social death. Parents would have been equally anxious to avoid socialising with their kids, fearing they would end up bored and alarmed in equal measure.

Now times are changing. Parents and teenagers are out more and more together - shopping, at the cinema, reading books and seeing plays. Age is no longer a social divide. Growing older does not mean giving up, while youth is no longer synonymous with irresponsibility.

This seismic shift in the seven ages of man is transforming the social landscape. On one side are the 'middle-youthers' - adults aping the tastes and lifestyle of teenagers.

Go out in any city on a Saturday night and you'll see hundreds of these 'cradle-to-ravers': fortysomethings in combat trousers and trainers going to the latest bars and restaurants and listening to the latest bands. Paul McCartney, Jerry Hall, Richard Madeley, Simon le Bon, Nicky Haslam, Jeremy Irons, Madonna, Chrissie Hynde and even Bill Clinton are all confirmed 'adultescents' or 'kidults'.

They drive cars that appeal to the child in them - the chunky, toy-like Audi TT sports car or the girlie new VW Beetle complete with vase and plastic flower. They watch I'm A Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here! when Newsnight is over. They obsess over PlayStation2, go on holiday to Ibiza, tuck a copy of Heat! inside their Financial Times, have given up skiing for snowboarding and enjoy reading Harry Potter and listening to Coldplay and Radiohead as much as their teenage children.

Statistics confirm that the concept of 'age is not a number, it's a state of mind' is growing. Children's books that appeal to adults have helped to double the number of readers aged over 18 in the past few years. In 1990 the average age of video game players was 18; now it is 29. Today more adults watch the Cartoon Network than many news channels.

But the changing story of youth and age is not just about the old acting younger. The young are now acting older. Step into the world of the 'tweenager'. Not for him or her the frivolities of youth. These savvy youngsters aspire to the grown-up lifestyle of the ultimate tweenagers, US idols Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, who run a multi-billion pound tween business selling high fashion, grooming, magazines, mobile phones, and computers to eager 11-19-year-olds.

When they move out of their 'tweens', these driven youngsters get jobs sooner and often work harder than their parents. Worried about job security and inspired by the success of young entrepreneurs such as lastminute.com's Martha Lane Fox, they often skip their gap year, go straight to college or university and grab the first high-paying job that comes along.

Despite their high hopes, many end up finding that they are actually too young to cope. Instead of feeling satisfied by their newfound maturity, they end up depressed. Recent figures from the Office for National Statistics show that the number of 25-34-year-olds who are receiving treatment for depression is rising by 10 per cent year on year.

There is, of course, nothing new about observing that the young are preoccupied with moving on and the old are obsessed with recapturing their youth. Nor is it surprising that the old and the young now mix more. Most of the traditional divisions in society - age, race and class are breaking down. But what is new is the extent to which adults are adopting what Professor Frank Furedi, a sociologist at the University of Kent, calls 'infantilism' and the lengths youngsters now go to in order to grow up. Some psychologists say that, by aping the habits of their children, adults are stifling youngsters' development. And new evidence from America suggests that teenagers and twentysomethings are now growing up so fast that they are suffering 'early burn-out' or 'a quarterlife crisis'.

So why are the young acting so much older so fast and the old so keen to act like teenagers?

Later marriage and more second marriages are encouraging fortysomethings to act like twentysomethings, but, according to Furedi, the main reason that adults act young is fear. 'Nostalgia for childhood might seem innocent and fun, but it is symptomatic of a profound insecurity about the future.

'We now have a culture in which people are frightened of what the future might hold and are terrified of taking risks, so they seek refuge in past certainties - and what could be more comforting than our childhood or teenage years?' Ironically, the same stimulus is forcing youngsters to grow up faster. Dr Nick Baylis, a psychologist and lecturer at Cambridge University, says: 'Fears for the future, job and financial insecurity, and the "work hard, play hard" mentality are forcing young people to work in a neurotically hard and grown-up way to achieve what they think will be satisfaction.'

The breakdown of the traditional age divide might seem a step forward from the days when parents inhabited an entirely separate world from their children, but is that really the case?

'There are some pluses,' says Philip Hodson of the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy. 'Adults freely discussing things with their kids can be a good thing.

'But when parents assume the same sort of role as their children, start to act like them and mix with their friends, it is a warning sign that something is lacking in their own lives. It can become stifling. Children need their independence.'

Hodson also warns that many British youngsters, like their US counterparts, are beginning to suffer early burnout as they grow up faster.

So, if you're going to a gig or book launch or first night this week, and you are thinking of taking your trendy teenage child with you, go ahead and live the 'Club 11-75' dream. You can be Daddy Cool or Yummy Mummy and your child will probably have a good time.

But when the evening is over, don't forget to act your age, not your shoe size.

What to do if you're a 'kidult'

Read Harry Potter

See Lord of the Rings

Listen to Limp Bizkit

Play Grand Theft Auto II

Ride a micro-scooter

Buy a G-Shock watch

Wear Nike trainers

Drink Diet Coke

Moisturise

Send txt msgs

Shop at Top Shop

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Now I've written a little something which started out as an article about perspectives, however it turned out a little different. I think this would be interesting to many of you. However, I ask you to read it lightly, if you like it, you can think more about it, do some research and the likes. However, if you dislike it, just leave it be. You have as much right to hating my work as to loving it. Comments (both positive and negative) can be sent to my HDM.org account, or email. There's also a topic in the Columns forum.

Caspian@hisdarkmaterials.org

The idea of a "republic of heaven" is in the air. Philip Pullman dropped it into popular consciousness with his fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials, serialised on Radio 4 and now about to get the blockbuster film treatment. The books tell the tale of Lyra and Will, whose destiny is to free humankind from the power of "the Authority" and his "Magisterium" - God and the Church; the children are the instruments by which the Authority's kingdom will be dismantled and men and women become "free citizens of the republic of heaven".

In 1999, I produced a very different book, Gerrard Winstanley And The Republic Of Heaven, about the 17th-century Digger, True Leveller and Quaker who agitated for an English republic based on community and cooperation.

What the visions of Winstanley and Pullman have in common is the realisation that kingship is dead. Whether we chop off their heads or relegate our monarchs to figurehead status, in the modern democratic world we consider ourselves not subjects but free citizens. And where does that leave the king of kings and lord of lords? Having discarded the divine right of kings, what do we do with the kingship of the divinity?

Get rid of that too, said Winstanley, aiming to dispatch not only temporal kingly power but also the throne of God himself. "In the beginning... the great creator, Reason, made the earth to be a common treasury." If earthly kingship was obsolete, how much more so was its divine original? What could it mean to persist in imagining God in the feudal terms of kingship, lordship, as He Who Must Be Obeyed?

No king, no kingdom. So the kingdom of heaven becomes a republic, where the public is king - where we have to take responsibility for creating a better world, "as it is in heaven", instead of leaving it all to the Authority.

In my new book, The Trouble With God: Religious Humanism And The Republic Of Heaven, I try to grapple with the question of what such a republic might look like. To my surprise, I find it is not very different from the kingdom of heaven described by Jesus a couple of thousand years ago.

Jesus made his own distinctive contribution to the kingdom debate, not in scholarly exegesis, philosophical polemics or literary criticism but in parables, aphorisms and riddles. These reveal a notion of kingdom turned on its head - a "kingdom of nobodies", where the hungry, the distressed, the ridiculed and the ridiculous come into their own.

But Jesus did not lay down the law, as you might expect a proper king to do. His parables and aphorisms were tantalisingly ambiguous. Like all the best storytellers, he challenged his listeners to share with him the task of carving a meaning out of his riddles. He was no provider of ready-made blueprints, fixed constitutions or paper utopias; if we want to be free citizens, we must accept the obligations and responsibilities of freedom, and work things out for ourselves.

Ernest Renan, an early scholar of Jesus's kingdom teaching, suggested in The Life of Jesus (1863) that "the kingdom of God was made, first, for children, and those who resemble them". It is this emphasis that Philip Pull- man revives as he substitutes "republic" for "kingdom". The imaginative world of the child is the indispensable foundation of his republic of heaven.

This republic is not, after all, so different from the kingdom. But it is a realm where authority is democratised, so that what were once seen as the king's responsibilities become our own. The republic imports much from the kingdom; it takes in Isaiah's peaceable kingdom, Jesus's world, where all tears are wiped away, and Blake's Jerusalem.

What it will not import is unquestioning obedience and uncritical subjection to a divine lord and king, for lordship and kingship belong to the past. Lyra and Will saw things through children's eyes, and lived in the power of the wholly human spirit. Of such is the republic of heaven.

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