HisDarkMaterials.org

JRR Tolkien's epic fantasy trilogy The Lord of the Rings has won the BBC's Big Read contest to find the UK's most popular novel beating Pride and Prejudice, His Dark Materials, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

With 23% of the public's vote or 174 thousand votes, LotR was a clear winner with 39 thousand more votes than second-placed Pride and Prejudice and more than His Dark Materials, The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Harry Potter combined.

Phone votes were cast up to and during the BBC Two show and Tolkien's triumph was announced live from the Royal Opera House in a program presented by Clive Anderson.

Bookmakers Ladbrokes had closed bets in October because The Lord of the Rings had become the only real contender in "a one horse race."

A spokesman from Ladbrokes said:

"Tolkien fans are amongst the best organized group of supporters on the internet and for two days, our website was under siege. Nobody wanted to back anybody other than Tolkien, we couldn't continue betting on a one horse race and were forced to close the book and take the losses on the chin."

Book-selling internet site Amazon.co.uk reported the project - which originally shortlisted 100 novels - boosted sales of some books by nearly 500% after the list was announced on October 18th.

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JRR Tolkien's epic fantasy trilogy, the Lord of the Rings, has won the BBC's Big Read contest to find the UK's most popular novel.

The three books have enjoyed renewed popularity after being made into big-budget film versions.

They tell the story of a group of "hobbits" as they battle their way across Middle Earth to destroy a powerful but evil magical ring.

The trilogy won 174,000 votes, 23% of the poll.

They tell the story of a group of "hobbits" as they battle their way across Middle Earth to destroy a powerful but evil magical ring.

The trilogy won 174,000 votes, 23% of the poll.

The other main contender going into Saturday night was Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, which won 135,000 votes.

Philip Pullman's metaphysical trilogy of children's books, His Dark Materials, came third with 63,000; Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was fourth with 57,000; and JK Rowling's Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was fifth with 55,000.

Tolkien's triumph was announced live from the Royal Opera House in a programme presented by Clive Anderson.

Simon Tolkien, grandson of the author, was at the ceremony and said: "It's an unbelievable honour to be here today and for my grandfather to be so loved in this way."

He said the award would have meant an "enormous amount" to Tolkien.

He added that before the work was published, Tolkien had said he was dreading comments that would be made about it.

"He said 'I have exposed my heart to be shot at'.

"There's been a lot of shooting over the last 50 years but there's also been an enormous amount of love and I think that's come through today. It's a wonderful moment."

Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, AA Milne's Winnie the Pooh and Joseph Heller's Catch-22 also figured prominently but did not make the final shortlist.

Over the past seven weeks, the top 21 books have been championed by celebrity fans.

Bookmakers Ladbrokes had closed bets in October because The Lord of the Rings had become the only real contender in "a one horse race".

"Nobody wanted to back anybody other than Tolkien, we couldn't continue betting on a one-horse race and were forced to close the book and take the losses on the chin," a spokesman said.

'Under siege'

Odds for the Lord of the Rings had opened at 5-1.

"Tolkien fans are amongst the best organised group of supporters on the internet and for two days, our website was under siege," the spokesman said.

Book-selling internet site Amazon.co.uk reported the project - which originally shortlisted 100 novels - boosted sales of some books by nearly 500% after the list was announced on 18 October.

Winnie the Pooh led the upsurge, with sales up 474% while demand for The Lord of the Rings went up 400%.

Book chain Waterstone's said sales of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy rose 342% after being featured on the show.

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JRR Tolkien's epic tale of fantasy, "The Lord of the Rings", was voted Britain's favourite novel late Saturday after almost three-quarters of a million bookworms answered a BBC poll.

Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice", in second place, was the only non-fantasy book among Britons' five favourite works. "His Dark Materials trilogy" by Philip Pullman won third spot ahead of Douglas Adams' "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" which just pushed "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" - the fourth instalment of the boy wizard adventures - into fifth place.

"The Lord of the Rings" trilogy has enjoyed renewed popularity following its successful switch to the cinema screen. The winning text was announced in a ceremony at the Royal Opera House in central London, broadcast live on BBC television and attended by Simon Tolkien, grandson of JRR Tolkien.

"I think it's an unbelievable honour to be here today and for my grandfather to be so loved in this way," Simon Tolkien said following the award.

Novels falling just short of the top five included Harper Lee's "To Kill A Mockingbird", AA Milne's "Winnie The Pooh" and George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four".

The search for Britain's favourite novel began in April when nearly 140,0000 people voted in the BBC's "The Big Read" poll to find the nation's top 100 fictional works.

The list was eventually whittled down to five after which some 750,000 people voted to select the winner. "The Lord of the Rings" won 174,000 votes in the final poll, 39,000 ahead of its nearest rival "Pride and Prejudice" and over 100,000 more than the fourth instalment of "Harry Potter".

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His Dark Materials is third in the Big Read! In an incredible way His Dark Materials jumped from 6th to 3rd place, leaving Harry Potter far behind! Many thanks to everybody who voted!

The Top Five List

1. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker''s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - JK Rowling

Visit the Big Read website for more information.

Philip Pullman

BHA education officer Marilyn Mason responds:

The Big Read translates into big sales as the BBC's shortlist turns classics into bestsellers

The winner of the BBC's ambitious project to find the nation's favourite book will be revealed tonight but, for the 21 works short-listed, The Big Read has already been a selling triumph.

Figures released yesterday showed that combined sales of the books have increased by more than 425 per cent since they were chosen two months ago. And DVD sales of film adaptations of the top books have been even more successful, increasing by 1,500 per cent in the same period.

The hunt for Britain's most popular book was launched nine months ago as part of a BBC initiative to encourage the nation to read and appreciate books. More than 140,000 people voted initially for the top 100 books, prompting sales of those books to soar by 1,100 per cent throughout the summer.

Further rounds of votes resulted in the compilation of the final list of 21 top books, which was unveiled in October. Since then, the public has voted every weekend at the end of a television programme on one of the books presented by a celebrity.

The final list includes an eclectic array of novels that ranges from AA Milne's Winnie the Pooh to Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace. A number of English classics were represented by such books asWuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte, and her sister Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre.

But it is Lord of the Rings that is expected to follow in the footsteps of its global film success as the bookies' favourite to win, with odds of 3-1. Pride and Prejudice and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire are the joint second favourite with odds of 5-1.

In terms of celebrity endorsement, Ruby Wax proposed JD Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, Clare Short voiced her support for Louis de Bernieres's Captain Corelli's Mandolin, while John Humphreys travelled to Alabama, the setting of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird.

A BBC spokeswoman commented yesterday: "Anything that encourages great literature is fantastic. Weekly book sales overall on The Big Read Top 21 have increased by 425 per cent since the list was first announced.

"More than 2,000 new reading groups have been formed, overall library lending has increased by 56 per cent on the same period last year and 500,000 votes have been cast for the UK's favourite book."

Of the 21 top books, 15 were available on DVD, sales of which have at times eclipsed those of the novels, according to figures released by Amazon.co.uk. While Captain Corelli's Mandolin rose by 155 per cent after theThe Big Read began, sales of the Hollywood adaptation starring Penelope Cruz increased by 1,533 per cent.

And book sales of Joseph Heller's Catch 22 were boosted by 24 per cent, compared with an increase of 1,500 per cent in sales of the 1970 Mike Nichols movie.

A spokesman for Amazon said: "The Big Read has made people think about the books that they have missed out on, but not everyone has the time to read them and some people can't be bothered so they are opting to take in the film version instead."

A BBC spokeswoman denied that it was a negative effect of the programme. "We are delighted the public are responding so enthusiastically to the initiative and choosing to discover great literature through all of the different platforms available today, from books to DVDs," she said.

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In the Independent

The National Theatre is being accused of blasphemy for producing an adaptation of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy at Christmas time. Aleks Sierz talks to Pullman and the director Nicholas Hytner about the difficulties of the project

Philip Pullman has no intention of being the next Salman Rushdie. As his bestselling trilogy, His Dark Materials, is staged by the National Theatre, headlines have been grabbed not by the artistic endeavour of dramatising the epic, but by accusations of blasphemy. Catholic and Protestant groups have criticised the timing of the show, with a spokesman for the Church of England saying: "Given that Christmas is a major Christian festival, His Dark Materials wouldn't seem an obvious choice."

This sounds odd until you examine the books of the trilogy - Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass - more closely. They tell the story of two special children, Lyra and Will, on their quest for Dust, which has the power to dissolve universes. For them, it's a coming- of-age adventure: before they arrive at the republic of heaven, they have to deal with a repressive church, and with a parallel world inhabited by rebellious angels and soul-eating spectres. In the end, an aged god dies.

Rupert Kaye, the head of the Association of Christian Teachers, sums up the argument against the show: "Pullman sets out to undermine and attack the Christian faith. His blasphemy is shameless. This production is in poor taste, given the timing and the content. Teachers should steer clear." As a Christian teacher, he sees the books as "anti-Christian propaganda" aimed at vulnerable youngsters; a kind of literary child abuse.

He also shrewdly points out that Pullman "is not bold enough to list Allah among the names attributed to the Authority," and suggests that "this omission signals the author's attempt to insulate himself" from the risk of a Rushdie-style fatwa. This barb refers to the passage in The Amber Spyglass where an angel says: "The Authority, God the creator, the Lord, Yahweh, El, Adoni, the King, the Father, the Almighty - those were the names he gave himself. He was never the creator. He was an angel like ourselves."

But Pullman has no patience with this kind of criticism. "Yes, I missed out the name Allah, but I also missed out Dieu and Gott," he says acidly. When asked if he's afraid of doing a Rushdie, he replies: "Okay, right, the next time it's reprinted I'll include the name Allah." He also points out that "he didn't call himself Allah - that's just an Arabic word for God. The names I give in the passage are just as offensive to Muslims, I hope, as they are to Christians."

As you'd expect from reading His Dark Materials, Pullman - a slim fiftysomething former teacher - is hot on the history of religion. The title itself is a quotation from Book II of Milton's Paradise Lost. "But the point is," he stresses, "that the Muslim tradition follows on from the Jewish and Christian tradition and uses the same basic myth, which comes from the same monotheistic origins. All the other names I list cover Allah as well."

The trilogy is not so much a teen cult as a big industry. The books may have sold millions of copies, winning prizes and plaudits galore, but their story has taken on a life of its own. Pullman himself read the audiobook version, then it was dramatised by Lavinia Murray for Radio 4 in January (available on CD or cassette) and now Lyra's Oxford, in which Pullman maps his heroine's home town, is in the shops. A film, with a screenplay by Tom Stoppard, is in prospect and, in the meantime, you can see the stage version at the National.

Pullman, the first children's author to win the Whitbread Book of the Year prize, has distanced himself from the film, but takes a more hands-on attitude to the two plays - adapted by Nicholas Wright, whose version of Chekhov's Three Sisters was a hit earlier this year - that make up the stage version. He's attended rehearsals and speaks warmly about "the good work of the two Nicks", meaning the director Nicholas Hytner and Wright.

Hytner, the suave head of the flagship theatre, says: "I genuinely believe that teenagers ask the big questions we have no time for in the rest of our lives." As Lyra and Will go into battle against ultimate evil, they meet angels and armoured bears, and each has a "daemon", a shape-shifting animal who might be an owl one minute or a fox the next. Try finding a theatrical way of doing that.

Staging this epic has itself been an epic task: it has taken 18 months to put together, has a cast of more than 30, and stars a former James Bond - Timothy Dalton - and Patricia Hodge, as well as younger actors Anna Maxwell Martin as Lyra and Dominic Cooper as Will. It has been hyped as the most expensive show ever at the National, but the truth is rather less spectacular. Hytner says: "The cost is a little more than Anything Goes and less than My Fair Lady, so that's two plays for the cost of one musical. The figure on our budget is

Patricia Hodge plays the icily alluring Mrs Coulter in the epic adaptation of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, about to open at the National Theatre. She tells Jasper Rees about her personal demons

There is a horrifying scene in Northern Lights, the first of Philip Pullman's bestselling His Dark Materials fantasy trilogy. The young heroine Lyra is fastened into a surgical contraption designed to separate her from her daemon. A daemon, in the parallel world imagined by Pullman, is the embodiment of a character's inner hopes and fears. In animal form, it represents the human soul. Severance is thus an act of unthinkable brutality.

The machine has not been invented that could detach the actress Patricia Hodge from the pair of adjectives that have dogged her for 25 years. "Cold" is one. "Aloof" is the other. Of all the many actresses who have portrayed Mrs Thatcher, Hodge - in last year's BBC drama The Falklands Play - is the one who truly conveyed the steel, the permafrost, the sense of being a powerful woman in a man's world. Which is why she is perfect casting as Mrs Coulter, the beautiful villainness who abducts children to sever them from their daemons, in Nicholas Hytner's National Theatre staging of His Dark Materials. Of course Hodge is having to locate her motivations and, in her phrase, "play the person, not the effect. I've had to find, with quite a degree of difficulty, the heartbeat of this woman, because nobody believes that they are evil."

It is perfect casting in all ways but one. "I'm much too old for it," offers Hodge who - astonishing to relate - is less than three years shy of her 60th birthday. "She's supposed to be 35. That's one of the questions I had for Nick. I said, 'Are you sure?' " Hytner's response was to explain that Lyra, Mrs Coulter's estranged 11-year-old daughter, would be played by an actress in her early 20s: the role, stretching over two three-hour plays, was too demanding for a child. "He said, 'I must believe that Mrs Coulter can be Lyra's mother, and I cannot possibly go down the route of having a 35-year-old play the mother of a 24-year-old.' I have a few laughs at myself. I dare say comments will be made."

Ever since she played Lady Diana Cooper in the television series Edward and Mrs Simpson (1978), Hodge has stoically lived with a form of stereotyping. "You mean ice-cold? Cornered the market in, etc? People don't take risks in television," she says, stabbing at a salad between rehearsals at the National. "They want what you do. That's why I spent the past 10 years, with the odd exception, in theatre. I would make no secret of the fact that anything that's offered from this building immediately goes to the top of the heap. Television is just more and more and more of the same."

The curious thing is that even in theatre she finds audiences resistant to her playing against type. Her last big show at the National was Noises Off, Michael Frayn's backstage farce, in 2000. The first wave of laughter came when the audience discovered that Dottie, the cockney char answering the phone, is an actress with a cut-glass accent merely playing the char. It was a perfect chance for Hodge to confound expectation. "The awful thing was that people didn't really want to see me doing that. There were a few people who said, "What a shame we didn't see you as you.' "

It makes one wonder who they think Patricia Hodge is, with her alabaster, aquiline face and pallid blue eyes? Few would guess that she was born in Cleethorpes and brought up in Grimsby. Her parents ran the port's grandest hotel, hosting company dinners and society weddings. "They were extremely smart. They spent their life as very upwardly mobile people. The aristocratic world didn't come into our world but the moneyed middle classes did. I did a lot of observing."

Did their daughter have an accent? "Probably, for Lincolnshire, not much of one, but as soon as you get outside of Lincolnshire I would say yes." Her first big foray out of Lincolshire was a trip to the theatre in London when she was nine or 10. "I just sort of thought, it's another world. Until that, theatre to me was the East Coast dance festival on Cleethorpes pier."

Once she'd discovered its existence, she formed a burning ambition to attend the Italia Conti stage school. Her parents sent her to a Home Counties boarding school instead. The accent vanished, to be replaced by the voice that allowed her to play not only the original Lady Diana, but also the well-heeled crime-solver in Jemima Shore Investigates, Gertrude Lawrence in Noel and Gertie, and Nancy Mitford in a musical about the Mit ford sisters. To this day she calls complete strangers "darling". She drawls the word, exquisitely.

After school she spent three years as a primary school drama teacher and didn't start at LAMDA until she was 22. Her first significant television role - as a ballet teacher in The Naked Civil Servant - wasn't until she was 29. She didn't get her real breakthrough role until 1983, at 36, in the film version of Harold Pinter's Betrayal.

And now at 57, trim and chic in black trousers, black pullover and black jacket, she gets to play her first Bond girl, or at least to play opposite Timothy Dalton, who takes the role of Lord Asriel, Lyra's father. I mention this flippantly just to see what she says. "Probably the nearest I'll get." Did she ever want to be one? "No. I never had enough confidence in my sexuality for that. I don't mean that in a cute way. I just didn't." But she has played a lot of women who are confident in their sexuality - Rosalind in As You Like It, the sexiest woman in Shakespeare, and Emma in Betrayal, the sexiest woman in Pinter. "I think that's more sexuality of the mind than the body. I never had that sex goddess thing. It's not me. The people that play them are incredible."

She didn't find out that Emma was a fictional version of Joan Bakewell, with whom Pinter had an affair, until after finishing the film. "I was glad I hadn't known. I was bemused and thought, well, I'm nothing like Joan. And then a strange thing happened. It was the year the film was out. I was at the Evening Standard Awards, I think in the Savoy ladies' cloakroom. And Joan was next to me. Both of us were looking in the mirror at each other. And I said, 'I feel as if I know you.' She said, 'Yeees.' She was very sweet and polite and we didn't dwell on it.

"I would say that my confidence has changed a lot in the last 10 years." Because of children? Hodge is a somewhat reluctant poster girl for late motherhood: her first son in her early 40s, her second in her mid-40s. "I think absolutely undoubtedly. I was more of an empty vessel before that." She also attributes a growth in confidence to a three-week cabaret stint she did at Pizza on the Park in Knightsbridge 10 years ago. "I don't rate my voice. It's good enough to deliver songs that have a good lyric. I'm more suited to the 20s, 30s, 40s song. I'll never forget that first night - really one of the most difficult things I have ever had to do in my whole life. Just being myself."

There is a sense, with Hodge, of a late-flowering self-discovery, but she still doesn't quite believe that people want much more than the arctic toff. "There are a lot of things that I could do that people haven't seen me do. Broad comedy. Probably I came the nearest to it doing Noises Off. Ben Kingsley and I used to talk about doing The King and I together. But it's too late now." She says this without self-pity. I ask if she'd have a crack at another great Rodgers and Hammerstein role, Aunt Eller in Oklahoma!, most recently played by another Thatcher impersonator, Maureen Lipman. She looks doubtful. "Well, would you cast me in that part? I don't know that I'd cast me in that part. Would I do it? Yes, I bloody would. Do it like a shot."

His Dark Materials opens on December 20 at the Olivier Theatre (tickets: 020 7452 3000).

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JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings is, everyone agrees, a shoo-in to come top in the Big Read poll this evening. But it is not the recent bestseller among the 21 novels competing for the title (see chart below). In the past 12 weeks, Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy has sold more than 170,000 copies, outdoing the three Tolkien novels by more than three copies to one. In third place comes, notwithstanding William Hague's advocacy, Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks.

The top classic is not Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, second favourite in some lists to win, but Emily Bront

Literature lovers are preparing for the end of the BBC's Big Read contest to find the UK's most popular novel, with more than 500,000 votes already cast.

JRR Tolkien's The Lord of The Rings is currently in the lead, with Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice in second.

Douglas Adams' sci-fi comedy The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is in third place, followed by JK Rowling's Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Phone votes can be cast on Saturday, ahead of the BBC Two show at 2100 GMT.

The results will be announced live from the Royal Opera House in a programme presented by Clive Anderson.

Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird is currently fifth in the race, with Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, AA Milne's Winnie the Pooh and Joseph Heller's Catch-22 among the others in the top 10.

All online, text and interactive voting methods have closed, but phone vote lines will stay open until Saturday.

"We hope we get the same enthusiasm as we have so far in the project," a BBC spokeswoman said.

Over the past seven weeks, the top 21 books have been championed by celebrity fans.

'One horse race'

The live results coverage will include a countdown from number 21 to number five, and then a more detailed look at the five most popular books.

Comedy troupe Reduced Shakespeare Company will perform skits based on the books.

Bookmakers Ladbrokes closed bets in October because The Lord of the Rings had become the only real contender in "a one horse race".

"Nobody wanted to back anybody other than Tolkien, we couldn't continue betting on a one horse race and were forced to close the book and take the losses on the chin," a spokesman said.

'Under siege'

Odds for the Lord of the Rings had opened at 5-1.

"Tolkien fans are amongst the best organised group of supporters on the internet and for two days, our website was under siege," the spokesman said.

Book-selling internet site Amazon.co.uk reported the project - which originally shortlisted 100 novels - boosted sales of some books by nearly 500% after the list was announced on 18 October.

Winnie the Pooh led the upsurge, with sales up 474% while demand for The Lord of the Rings went up 400%.

Book chain Waterstone's said sales of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy rose 342% after being featured on the show.

The Big Read Final, presented by Clive Anderson, is on BBC Two from 2100-2230 GMT on Saturday.

[© BBC News, 13/12/03]

Literature lovers are preparing for the end of the BBC

The closest rivals to Lord of the Rings were understood to be JK Rowling

Philip Pullman and His Dark Materials are not the usual stuff of glittery Christmas drama, but this year, the popular trilogy is converted into a two-part adaptation for the stage.

Audiences can see Lyra and Will as they defy the wrath of organised religion in an epic adventure across alternative universes.

This story unfolds over the course of two plays. See Part I and Part II on separate dates, or enjoy both on the same day in a double bill.

His Dark Materials takes audiences on a thrilling journey through worlds familiar and unknown. For Lyra and Will, its two central characters, it

Once upon a time in an English garden, a little girl lived in a parallel universe ... and the comparisons began. But author Philip Pullman would rather be seen as a modern-day Jane Austen than the new Tolkien.

He's been called the male J.K. Rowling. Constantly compared with J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Likened to literary lions such as Milton, Tolstoy, Blake, even Chekhov.

His best-known creation - a 12-year-old scruffy, disobedient, pubescent girl named Lyra, from a parallel universe - has been described as one of the most glorious female characters in modern fiction. Her adventures - detailed in the 1200-page trilogy collectively called His Dark Materials - were recently named among Britain's "favourite 100 books of all time" and have frequently outsold the Harry Potter stories.

The film rights have been bought by New Line Cinema, makers of The Lord of the Rings, who plan a similar blockbuster movie series. The distinguished playwright Tom Stoppard has already written the scripts.

And, in London next week, the curtain rises on the National Theatre's groundbreaking two-play production of His Dark Materials. Designed to be seen on a single day, the plays have been called the National Theatre's most ambitious project since Nicholas Nickleby, 20 years ago.

If you haven't heard of Philip Pullman, you soon won't be able to escape his name. Due to readers' demands, a companion guide to Lyra's parallel universe, Lyra's Oxford (Random House, $29.95) was released in Australia in October. Pullman couldn't resist including a short story about Lyra, which he promises is "a foreword to the big book which I'm going to begin next year".

All of this excitement was conjured up in Pullman's garden shed, where the former Oxford lecturer escaped to do his writing, away from the strains of a violin-playing son. Alas, says Pullman, as he pours himself a glass of wine at the other end of the phone, he no longer owns the shed. Thanks to Lyra, he and his wife have moved to a larger house on a hill overlooking Oxford, with a suitably grand study.

For the uninitiated, His Dark Materials is Pullman's modern reworking of Milton's classic 17th-century poem Paradise Lost, disguised as a children's adventure story. On a superficial level, it relates the adventures of two children, Lyra Silvertongue (who comes from "a universe like ours, but different in many ways") and Will Parry (who comes from the world we know), as they are caught up in the battle to decide who rules Heaven.

Along the way, they encounter some of the most magical creatures ever devised: Iorek, king of the "armoured bears"; Lee Scoresby, the gas balloonist-aeronaut; Stanislaus Grumman, the shaman; Baruch and Balthamos, the homosexual angels; Chevalier Tialys and Lady Salmakia, the dragonfly-riding Gallivespian spies.

There are foul-smelling "cliff ghasts", kidnapping "gobblers", harpies, renegade "gyptians", love-'em-and-leave-'em witches. A rich tapestry of characters with only one common quality: in the moral maelstrom of Pullman's multiple worlds, you're never sure who is on whose side.

No doubt Pullman's imagination is the reason why the three books - Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass - are so popular with children. Adult readers, however, are drawn by two other qualities. The beauty of his writing (he won the 2001 Whitbread Prize for The Amber Spyglass after the rules were altered to allow "children's fiction" in an "adult" competition); and the profundity of the philosophy that underpins the trilogy: essentially, the heretical notion that there was once a war in Heaven, and the wrong side won.

In Pullman's trilogy, Lyra is the new-age Eve, and Will is the modern-day Adam. God is a wizened spent force of an "Authority". And "The Fall" is to be celebrated as the defining moment of mankind, rather than the source of all worldly evil. Little wonder that His Dark Materials has been denounced by some religious zealots.

Pullman, though, expected more. "I've been surprised by how little criticism I've got. Harry Potter's been taking all the flak. I'm a great fan of J.K. Rowling, but the people - mainly from America's Bible Belt - who complain that Harry Potter promotes Satanism or witchcraft obviously haven't got enough in their lives. Meanwhile, I've been flying under the radar, saying things that are far more subversive than anything poor old Harry has said. My books are about killing God."

Pullman, the grandson of a rector, was born in Norwich in 1946. But he spent his childhood travelling the world with his father (courtesy of the Royal Air Force), including 18 months in Adelaide when he was slightly younger than Lyra. He remembers the excitement of the Melbourne Olympics, and discovering Norman Lindsay's The Magic Pudding - "still one of my favourite books of all time. Why? Because it's funny." Famously, he retains his Australian links by watching Neighbours every day - "I never miss it".

After studying English at Oxford University, he lectured student teachers in Oxford while his reputation as an author and playwright grew. Yet it wasn't until Northern Lights was published in 1995 that he cracked the big time, winning the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Award for children's fiction.

As a teenager, he fell in love with Paradise Lost. "Books I and II, when the angels have just been thrown into Hell after the war in Heaven. They plot a terrible revenge, to destroy, subvert and ruin the new world God has made."

At first it was the pure beauty of Milton's poetry that inspired him ("I can still quote whole passages"). Not that he started His Dark Materials with Paradise Lost in mind. "I began with the idea of a little girl hiding somewhere she shouldn't be, overhearing something she shouldn't hear. I didn't know then who she was, where she was, or what she overheard. I just started writing. Before too long I realised I was telling a story which would serve as a vehicle for exploring things which I had been thinking about over the years. Lyra came to me at the right stage of my life."

Essentially, the trilogy is about the transition of innocence to experience, the triumph of knowledge over ignorance. When we're introduced to Lyra, we're told the inflexible church authorities in her world are anxious to stem the spread of "Dust". Only later do we find that Dust is good - "the totality of human wisdom and experience" is Pullman's description. It's the religious zealots trying to prevent the spread of wisdom who are the bad guys, even if they wear clerics' robes.

Pullman has no qualms with critics who label his books sacrilegious, so how does he describe himself? "If we're talking on the scale of human life and the things we see around us, I'm an atheist. There's no God here. There never was. But if you go out into the vastness of space, well, I'm not so sure. On that level, I'm an agnostic.

"That's not to say I disparage the religious impulse. I think the impulse is a critical part of the wonder and awe that human beings feel. What I am against is organised religion of the sort which persecutes people who don't believe. I'm against religious intolerance."

Questioning religion is, of course, one of the rites of passage from childhood to adulthood, and it is crucial to the trilogy that both Lyra and Will are going through puberty. They're at an age, says Pullman, when they're not just going through physical changes and emotional fears and excitements, but suddenly discovering "the potential of science, mathematics, art or literature. Or becoming consumed by questions of social justice or inequality. It all happens at that alarming, frightening, glorious age."

His teenage Adam and Eve are encouraged into physical union by the most unlikely temptress, Mary Malone, a former nun turned scientist. But he rejects the critics who have accused him of advocating underage sex. "Nowhere in the book do I talk about anything more than a kiss. And as a child, a kiss is enough. A kiss can change the world."

Pullman has been compared so many times with Tolkien and Lewis, it galls him. "Despite the armoured bears and the angels, I don't think I'm writing fantasy," he says. "I think I'm writing realism. My books are psychologically real. So I would be most flattered if I was compared to George Eliot, Jane Austen or Henry James." There's a pause, and the tinkle of a wine glass. "But I don't expect anybody will."

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After months of polling and on-air debate, the BBC on Saturday will finally identify to the British reading public which is the nation's "best-loved" book of all time. Deliberately excluding Shakespeare and the Bible, but admitting translations of foreign fiction, the announcement will be the culmination of a yearlong process.

First, the BBC invited its audience to vote by phone and e-mail. This exercise created a list of 100 top titles, ranging from Thomas Hardy's "Far From the Madding Crowd" to Helen Fielding's "Bridget Jones' Diary" and Vikram Seth's "A Suitable Boy." Viewers were next asked to vote on a not-very-short list of the top 21.

For a culture that is often denounced for its insularity, the BBC's voters responded predictably. There was only one translation (Tolstoy's "War and Peace") on the short list, and the other nominations reflected the influence of film, television and literary fashion: Philip Pullman, Daphne du Maurier, Louis de Bernieres, Douglas Adams and C.S. Lewis. In advance of a live TV finale, J.R.R. Tolkein's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy is a hot favorite, with J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" pressing hard. A fervent minority is hoping that Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" gets its nose ahead in the final furlong. Other fancied runners include J.D. Salinger, Joseph Heller and Harper Lee; American titles make up about one-third.

Undignified? You might think so. Crass? That was just one of the kinder epithets hurled at the BBC. The Big Read, as it's called, has inspired every possible reaction, from eye-rolling disdain to chin-wagging enthusiasm.

Top 10 lists and the arts certainly go ill together, but when the dust has settled, the Big Read will have raised a number of important cultural questions. You might question