HisDarkMaterials.org

Hundreds of you have joined our quest to find the greatest Briton of 2004 - and it is not just the usual suspects who are earning your vote.

The first wave of nominations saw Gary Frankum, the speedway rider struck down with ME, win praise for the his tireless campaigning against the disease.

Other surprise contenders include George Chaplin of the campaigning group Heritage Action, and Philip Pullman, the author behind The Amber Spyglass and Count Karlstein, who both found themselves ranked ahead of pop superstars such as Mick Jagger, Morrissey and David Bowie.

Cinema may seem more fun than theatre, but as two adaptations of his novels return to the stage, Philip Pullman says he knows where the real magic is.

I once heard Christopher Hampton make a very interesting point about the novel, the theatre and cinema. He said that the novel and the film have much more in common than either of them does with the stage play, and the main reason for that is the close-up. The narrator of a novel, and the director of a film, can look where they like, and as close as they like, and we have to look with them; but each member of the audience in a theatre is at a fixed distance from the action. There are no close-ups on the stage.

Philip Pullman has returned to fairy tales to carve a new story about goodness. The master craftsman tells Christina Patterson how to avoid 'moral woodworm'

Philip Pullman is making a rocking horse. He likes the challenge of working with the grain of the wood, of getting the chisels sharp and matching a joint. He likes the "engagement with the world of materials". He's finished making a table for the hall, but now, with the horse, he's got to carve. "If the eyes are slightly skew-whiff," he says with a smile, "the whole thing can look terribly sinister."

He has been hailed by many critics as the best children’s author since J. R. Tolkien, who created the magnificent Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Yet Philip Pullman — whose own His Dark Materials trilogy is to be made into a Hollywood film by the same company that turned Tolkien’s masterpiece into the most decorated film in the history of the Academy Awards — has a surprise for his fans. He does not rate Tolkien Pullman is quietly confident that this own film will be a critical success in the hands of New Line Cinema. But In conversation with Jeanette Winterson, the author of Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, he was dismissive of Tolkien.

In this article in The Herald, Anne Johnstone gives a nice summary of Philip Pullman's latest story - The Scarecrow and his Servant.

Pullman's readers are told to expect what they know - a wonderful story from "A Masterly Storyteller"

Click below to read the full article.

Reading is a democratic activity, argues Philip Pullman, and theocracies discourage it. Khomeini's Iran and the Soviet Union had similarly degraded views of literature - and Bush's America is heading the same way

I start from the position that theocracy is one of the least desirable of all forms of political organisation, and that democracy is a good deal better. But the real division is not between those states that are secular, and therefore democratic, and those that are religious, and therefore totalitarian. I think there is another fault line that is more fundamental and more important than religion. You don't need a belief in God to have a theocracy. Here are some characteristics of religious power:

Philip Pullman will be discussing and signing copies of his latest novel, 'The Scarecrow and his Servant' at Cheltenham Town Hall on Tuesday 9th November, in association with Waterstone's.
Tickets are £6, available from the Town Hall Box Office.

This article has four important facts in it for the HDM fan.

1. The Book of Dust will be a sort of sequel that takes Lyra four years on after The Amber Spyglass and to a different part of her world.
2. Philip Pullman has yet to start on writing The Book of Dust
3. The first His Dark Materials movie, Northern Lights, is being made with a script by Tom Stoppart according to Reuters but according to our information Chris Weitz has made a first draft on it. (See this previous article)
4. Even though Philip Pullman didn't want to be involved in making the movies, he now gives a clear message to New Line Cinema and Chris Weitz; Stick to the story.

Please click Read More below to see the full article.

Update:
The lads over at BttS have a nice eye-witness report of the same event which may be of your interest. You can find it here.

Philip Pullman's birthday is today, the 19th of October. Let us give thanks to Dust for sticking to this magnificent human being for so long and enhancing his writing skills!

The learning curve from teaching to writing has taught Philip Pullman a simple lesson: children don't want literature, they want to be told a story

Philip Pullman's story - impoverished diligence rewarded, wildest dreams granted - is a bit of a fairytale, really, so it's no wonder he's keen on them himself. He has already written a version of Puss in Boots, and now his Aladdin and the Enchanted Lamp (Scholastic £14.99, pp72), sumptuously illustrated by Sophie Williams, is joining it on the bookshelves.

A rather offtopic article about role models for the youth, but it has an interesting comment from Philip Pullman.

He may be one of the most ubiquitous sportsmen on the face of the planet, but when it comes to someone to look up to, soccer ace David Beckham has been pipped to the post by rugby star Jonny Wilkinson.

Jonny, who shot into the limelight with his star turn during the rugby world cup in Australia last year, bested several other sporting figures to the role model title in addition to Becks, who came in third.

A new survey has revealed that for avid book readers nothing is cooler than reading books with the perfect mix of magic and mystery, as the creator of the 'Harry Potter' series, J K Rowling was voted the coolest author ever.

The survey, conducted by the authors of a new book 'Cool Brandleaders,' questioned 3000 people and found that another children's author, Phillip Pullman was the third coolest author, while the mastermind behind the current bestseller 'The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown was the second coolest author, reports the Sun.

Special thanks to -Aconite- for pointing out this interesting article, written by Philip Pullman.

I don't do science, though I love to read about it. What I do is fiction. They are such different activities that I sometimes wonder whether the same type of mind can do both. I'm not talking about science fiction; it's a respectable genre, with conventions (and Conventions, too), and a canon, and giants and minnows, and classics and trash, but I don't write it and don't much read it. I'm talking about all the rest, about the basic thing that's known as story.

The Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children, which has earned millions of pounds in royalties from the copyright of Peter Pan, is to commission a sequel to J M Barrie's beloved masterpiece.

The hospital announced a nationwide competition yesterday to find an author worthy of the job.

The country's leading publishers and literary agents will be approached to each nominate two writers, who will be asked to submit a synopsis and sample chapter by Jan 31 next year.

Andrew Fane, chairman of the special trustees of the hospital's children's charity, who supervise Barrie's copyright, said: "The hospital would be very happy to attract very, very talented writers like J K Rowling or Philip Pullman because clearly that would give the sequel a high profile.

Great Ormond Street bids to cash in on Barrie's copyright legacy

The three leading storytellers in Britain's current golden age of children's fiction are expected to balk at a challenge made to them today - to embark on the "awfully big adventure" of writing a sequel to Peter Pan which proves as long-lived as the original.

The invitation comes from Great Ormond Street children's hospital in London, to which JM Barrie left the lucrative copyright of his stage play.