HisDarkMaterials.org

Our rich and varied literary life is under threat from proposals for a new pricing structure on what we read.

By Philip Pullman

Every week we go to the supermarket and buy a dozen eggs. We expect them to taste and look pretty well the same as last week's lot. And we know that neither the hen who laid them, nor the farmer who collected them, had anything to do with deciding what price we should pay at the checkout, because that's the job of the retailer; and we know that the price will have been worked out by balancing such things as the deal the farmer had to accept, the price the customer is likely to put up with, the wages of the shelf-stackers, and so on. Buying eggs is a transaction that takes place so often that we can tell at once if the price this week is twice what it was last week, or how much less the supermarket charges than the corner shop.

Authors join battle against supermarket strategies

A group of nearly 40 authors - including Beryl Bainbridge, JK Rowling, Philip Pullman and Vikram Seth - is going into battle against moves within publishing to abolish the cover price printed inside the dust jacket of a book, known as the recommended retail price (RRP). This deceptively small stroke of a publisher's pen could usher in an age where "supermarket disciplines" are imposed on the book industry, according to the president of the Society of Authors, Antony Beevor, author of the bestseller Stalingrad.

I received an email from Debra Squires, informing us of an opportunity for us His Dark Materials fans to have our name in the next Philip Pullman book, as one of the characters.

Philip Pullman will be auctioning this opportunity on Tuesday March 30th at the Groucho Club, London, England. Bidding will start as low as £100, and absentee bidding is possible. The highest bidder could have the possibility of meeting the author, attending the book launch and even possible TV interviews.

All proceeds go towards funding the vital work of the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture a unique charity working with thousands of torture survivors from 90 countries around the world including Turkey, Iran and Iraq.

Click here for Torture Care's auction information page.

Read the complete email below.

Great Interview with Philip Pullman. There's also some info about the movies. This is a must-read article!

Philip Pullman, author of the best-selling His Dark Materials which is headed for a sell-out run on the London stage, talks to TIME's Michael Brunton

What was your involvement in the staging of His Dark Materials and what do you think of the end results?
They invited me to come and look in on rehearsals and I've seen every stage of the script development. It's been a joy to be on the edges. And when I finally saw it in the stage I was absolutely thrilled. I never thought it could be staged. It was [National Theatre director] Nicholas Hytner who read the books

PHILIP PULLMAN has a young following every bit as loyal as that of J K Rowling. The readership of his fantasy novels includes many of the young people who have been drawn into the world of Harry Potter.

His books also sell very well in the United States and they are popular with adults on both sides of the Atlantic. Alongside the trilogy His Dark Materials, the last book of which won last night's award, he has written 15 novels and edited an anthology of detective stories.

The novels in the trilogy are fantasies featuring mysterious creatures, angels and heroic children doing battle against evil, drawing on John Milton's Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained.

Philip Pullman, the Whitbread award-winning author, has made an implicit criticism of the modern novel, claiming that unless it does more to tackle moral questions it is in danger of becoming "trivial and worthless".

Speaking at the Edinburgh International Books Festival, Pullman, who was once described as "semi-satanic" for his stance on religion, accused novelists of letting down their readers by failing to use their full potential to explore the moral questions of good and evil, life and death. Fiction would lose its value unless writers did more to tackle the great moral dilemmas of our time.

In August last year the best-selling author Philip Pullman was startled to receive a letter from Gotz Drauz, a senior official of the European Commission in Brussels. The "Merger Task Force" of "competition directorate B", the letter informed him, was investigating a proposed merger between two French publishing houses.

Under the EC's "merger regulation" 4064/89, Mr Pullman was obliged to answer a five-page questionnaire. If a reply was not received by noon on August 20, less than three weeks later, he would be liable to a fine of up to 50,000 euros (£35,000), with penalties up to 25,000 euros a day thereafter.

Philip Pullman has been a compulsive storyteller since childhood, to such effect that readers of all ages are enthralled by the worlds he creates - magical, but strangely familiar. This year, his was the first ever children's book to be longlisted for the Booker Prize. Sally Vincent finds him in his lair

...the search is launched for the country's wisest person

Philip Pullman is nominated for the title of 'wisest man of Britain' Or at least that is what Sage Magazine thinks.

They range from a railway engineer to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, at least three are still in their forties and one resigned from the Cabinet in disgrace, but together they are being touted as the very pinnacle of British wisdom.

After lists ranking humans according to criteria from wealth to breast size, voting is under way in a poll to find the sagest souls in the nation.

Prize-winning kids writer Philip Pullman says he doesn't think Lord of the Rings is such a good read.

He also said that children at primary school need to hear more stories being read to them.

Philip said: "I've never been a fan of Lord of the Rings. It's a good yarn, but that's it."

Philip wrote the Dark Materials trilogy and is writing The Book of Dust now which is also about Lyra from the previous books.

I dug up this interview with Philip Pullman from the arcives of The Independent. Although it's an old interview I really love it because it's really openharted and humorous; "Jude used to be a teacher, too, and then a hypnotherapist. "Although," says Philip later, "not of the crazy sort. She helped people stop smoking."

The Harry Potter phenomenon has proved there is big money in modern children's fiction. But it took Philip Pullman (who's just won the Whitbread prize) to show us that it had intellectual credibility. So why is he watching Neighbours every lunchtime?

I am watching Neighbours with Philip Pullman, winner of this year's Whitbread prize for The Amber Spyglass, and total literary genius in most people's books, although not Peter Hitchens's, who, in The Mail on Sunday, accused him of "killing God" and then labelled him "the most dangerous author in Britain". ("Of course," says Pullman, "I sent him a warm card of appreciation and thanks.") I must say, I don't feel in any particular danger. I must say, I don't feel he's about to invoke dark forces and make off with a cup of my blood. He looks kindly, avuncular, like the schoolteacher he once was: 56, grey-haired and not bespectacled, although you kind of feel he ought to be. He is wearing a comfy checked shirt and chinos. He does not say things like: "OK, who's ready for black mass?" Instead, he says things like: "Now, that's Lou and the question is, will he get custody of Lolly?" And: "That's the nice blonde nurse who was made pregnant by the doctor's nasty sidekick."

Review by Michael Cheang

The New Cut Gang books – Thunderbolt’s Waxwork and The Gas-Fitters’ Ball Author: Philip Pullman Publisher: Puffin Books

AS SOON as I saw the name Philip Pullman on the cover of these two books, I couldn’t wait to get my grubby hands on them. Never mind that the New Cut Gang books – The Gas-Fitters’ Ball and Thunderbolt’s Waxwork – are for children. Pullman is best known for his acclaimed His Dark Materials trilogy, which is touted by some as one of the best science fiction books ever written for children. With these two entertaining books on the New Cut Gang, Pullman shows his versatility, and gives J.K. Rowling a pointer or two on how to write a real children’s book in less than 130 pages and without making your book weigh more than a university textbook.

Celebrated children's author Philip Pullman has been made a CBE in the New Year Honours. Philip Pullman is the award-winning author of children's trilogy His Dark Materials.

He was born in Norwich in October 1946 and spent his childhood travelling because his father and step-father were both in the Royal Air Force.

He lived in Australia, South Africa and Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, before moving to North Wales at the age of 11.

After graduating with an English degree from Exeter College, Oxford, he became a teacher for 12 years before taking up a post as a part-time lecturer at Oxford's Westminster College.

LONDON (Reuters) - Guitar legend Eric Clapton has become the latest rock legend to win high honours from the Queen in this year's New Year's honour list.

The Grammy-winning rocker becomes a Commander of the British Empire, one of Britain's highest honours, putting him just a rung below the full-blown knighthoods enjoyed by Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Elton John and Sir Mick Jagger.

Ray Davies, frontman for the sixties band the Kinks, also wins a CBE.

Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Philip Pullman continue their conversation about whether consumerism and the mass media have created a crisis of childhood.

The platform will be held at the National Theatre on March 15th.