HisDarkMaterials.org

...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.

A survey to find the wisest person in Britain has been launched by Saga Magazine, the country's highest circulation journal, as a backlash against more superficial measures of celebrity.

The magazine has approached institutions ranging from the Royal Institute of British Architects to Oxford University to help it draw up a shortlist of 50 wise individuals.

The resulting list includes the Queen, 77, the musician and media mogul Bob Geldof, 49, the High Court judge Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, 70, and the 60-year-old fashion doyenne Suzy Menkes.

A spokeswoman for the magazine for the over-50s said: "There is no doubt about the popularity of this type of survey but they always seems to only recognise factors such as money or sex appeal.

"Wisdom isn't just about being smart, it is also about experience. We are looking for those with that mixture of brilliance and application."

The list is based on discreet soundings taken from individuals and professional and academic institutions. The subsequent consensus includes five scientists, among them Sir Richard Doll, 91, the doctor who first proved the link between smoking and cancer, and four politicians, including Gordon Brown, 52, Tony Benn, 78, and Lord Saatchi, 57, the advertising guru recently appointed co-chairman of the Conservative Party.

The compilers say they have also tried to draw attention to a few unsung heroes, including Bill Armstrong, 73, a campaigner for investment in the railways, and the architect Peter Cook.

Another inclusion is John Profumo, 88, the former war secretary who resigned in 1963 after his relationship with Christine Keeler was made public and has since devoted himself to charity work in London's East End.

The list is a further flexing of the social and political muscle of the over-50s, who now account for 70 per cent of Britain's richest people and make up 44 per cent of the population. The final rankings will be voted for online or by post by Saga readers. The results will be unveiled in the spring.

The early front runners were yesterday headed by the Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (7.5 per cent), the fertility expert Lord Winston (7.3 per cent), Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web (4.2 per cent), the Queen (3.2 per cent), Lord Rothschild, the banker and philanthropist (2.9. per cent), and Dame Butler-Sloss (2.7 per cent).

Mr Benn, who earlier this week was at the top of the list but has since slipped down, said that while he was flattered to be included, he was not quite certain what qualities the poll was seeking to define.

The veteran Labour politician said: ""We all gain experience as we grow older and I'll be 80 next year. If you use that experience sensibly then I suppose that might be wisdom."

As well as delivering a calculated snub to Tony Blair by nominating his Chancellor as a man of greater common sense, the short-list is as notable for its omissions as it is for those it features.

Only nine of the 50 are women, including the crime writer P D James, 83, and Ms Menkes, whose fashion writing places her ahead of figures from Dame Shirley Williams to Germaine Greer.

One source involved in drawing up the shortlist, which is expected to become an annual survey, said: "It is meant to be a little controversial. We are looking for people who have been around and done things that make them wise. But we don't pretend it's the perfect list."

The 50 who made the list of sages...

Dr Eric Anderson, 67: Taught Tony Blair at Fettes College and Prince Charles at Gordonstoun.

Bill Armstrong, 73: Secretary of the Permanent Way Institution, dedicated to "advance the art and science of railway infrastructure engineering"

Tony Benn, 78: First British MP to denunciate apartheid. Left Parliament after 50 years saying he wanted to "devote more time to politics".

Tim Berners-Lee, 48: British physicist who in 1990 invented the World Wide Web while working at the CERN nuclear research centre in Geneva.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle, 69: Composer who wrote unashamedly modern music in the early 1970s when the establishment favoured the avant garde.

Mike Brearley, 61: Inspirational England cricket captain.

Craig Brown, 46:

Guardian columnist who writes under the names Bel Littlejohn and Wallace Arnold.

Gordon Brown, 52: Chancellor of the Exchequer, who may yet get to Number 10. Celebrated birth of son, John, in October 2003.

Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, 70: President of the High Court Family Division.

Professor Peter Cook, 67: Co-founder of Archigram, the 1960s group of radical student architects. Cook's influence is in London in Norman Foster's GLA building and in the Swiss Re tower.

Francis Crick, 87: Scientist who discovered DNA double helix.

Frances Crook, 51: Took over Howard League for Penal Reform in 1985 at age of 32.

WF "Bill" Deedes, 90: Former cabinet minister, returned to reporting after long stint as editor of a national newspaper.

Sir Richard Doll, 91: Doctor who established link between smoking and cancer.

Sir Bob Geldof, 49: Musician and powerful voice of world conscience.

Lord Goldsmith, 53: Attorney general, co-chairs Human Rights Institute.

General Sir Timothy Granville-Chapman, 56: Land Commander in the army.

Sir Peter Hall, 73: Founder of Royal Shakespeare Company in 1960.

Professor Stuart Hall, 71: Foremost authority on race and ethnicity, co-authoring Policing the State.

Professor AH Halsey, 80: Britain's first professor of sociology.

Charles Handy, 71: Business management visionary, author of Age of Unreason and The Age of Paradox.

John Hume, 66: Entered talks with Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams in 1993, leading to ceasefire.

PD James (Baroness James of Holland Park), 83: The doyenne of crime writers.

Linton Kwesi Johnson, 51: One of only two living poets to be included in the Penguin Modern Classics series.

Sir Peter Lampl, 56: Independent advisor to the government on access to higher education through Sutton Trust, and a multi-millionaire.

Penelope Leach, 66: Child psychologist who wrote parenting bible Your Baby and Child.

Sir Alexander Macara, 71: President of the National Heart Forum. Seeks to improve all aspects of public health, most recently calling for a ban on public smoking.

Suzy Menkes, 60: Fashion editor of the International Herald Tribune.

Professor David Morley, 80: Emeritus Professor of Tropical Child Health at the Institute of Child Health in London.

Sir John Mortimer, 80: Playwright, novelist, barrister, creator of Rumpole of the Bailey.

John Profumo, 88: Overshadowed by the scandal that bears his name, Profumo has worked tirelessly for forty years for Toynbee Hall, east London.

Philip Pullman, 57: Children's author who won Whitbread Prize for The Amber Spyglass.

Queen Elizabeth II, 77

Sir Martin Rees, 61: Astronomer Royal. Believes there will be a catastrophe on Earth within 20 years which will kill more than a million people.

Lord Rothschild, 68: Wealthy international banker. Former chairman of National Gallery and Heritage Lottery Fund.

Dr Dorothy Rowe, 73: Clinical psychologist, whose books have helped millions tackle depression.

Lord Maurice Saatchi, 57: Co-chairman of Conservative party.

Jonathan Sacks, 55: Chief Rabbi.

Dame Cicely Saunders, 85: Developed modern hospice movement.

Simon Schama, 58: Historian who wrote History of Britain books, having lectured at Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, and now Columbia University.

Father Michael Seed, 47: Ecumenical officer to Archdiocese of Westminster, he has gained a reputation as headhunter for the Roman Catholic Church.

Sir Nicholas Serota, 57: Director of the Tate.

Sir Sigmund Sternberg, 82: Philanthropist, promoting world peace.

Sir John Sulston, 61: Biologist, one of the founding fathers of genetics.

Sir Crispin Tickell, 73: Diplomat who warned of the dangers of global warming.

Baroness Mary Warnock, 79: Moral philosopher trusted by government to tackle controversial social issues.

Charles Wheeler, 80: Doyen of BBC news, passionate believer in independent journalism.

The Most Rev Rowan Williams, 53: Archbishop of Canterbury.

Lord Winston, 63: Part of the team that created the world's first "test-tube" baby, Louise Brown. Britain's most prominent fertility expert, and Labour peer.

Sir Magdi Yacoub, 68: World's leading heart surgeon, forced to retire from NHS at 65.

...and two who didn't

Tony Blair, 50: While Saga Magazine describes his Chancellor as a "brilliant operator" and "perhaps the most intelligent member of the Government", the British Prime Minister is humiliatingly relegated to the status of an also-ran

Keith Richards, 60: Despite years of drug abuse, the Rolling Stones guitarist has long enjoyed an iconic status as an alternative sage. He recently further endeared himself to his fans by taking a swipe at Mick Jagger for accepting a knighthood

[

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."

He watches Neighbours every day, at 1.45pm. Never misses it. Loves it. Some people, he says, assume it's an affectation, but it just isn't so. "There is no distracting realism, the acting is terrible, and the characterisation is negligible, so all you are left with is the story. And that's what interests me. Stories. Ah, here's Harold Bishop. You must know Harold. Terrible old fusspot. He died and came back to life once. Ha!"

It is cosy in here, in its disappointingly un-Satanic way. We've been joined by Jude, Philip's wife, mother of their two grown-up sons. (One's a musician and the other is at Cambridge.) 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." Jude always watches Neighbours with Philip. At the moment, Jude is hoping Michelle doesn't go back with Zac. "He's such a creep," she says. "He stood her up once." Philip, too, is hoping Michelle doesn't go back with Zac. "He's such a nerd, such a dork. Hogarth! Stop playing with your todger!"

Hogarth is not in Neighbours. Hogarth is one of the Pullmans' little pugs. The other is Millie. Hogarth and Millie both have adorable faces, like stepped-on toads, and stiff little tails that squiggle up in the shape of the "@" used in e-mail addresses. This, however, exposes the full geography of their bottoms. The full geography of their bottoms is not so adorable. Millie and Hogarth go "plff" and "shlff" a lot, although whether this noise comes from their front ends or back ends, I really couldn't say. Chances are it's the front end, although I couldn't guarantee that they're not the windiest pugs in Britain. It is quite smelly in here. Philip and Jude, I would suggest, are not a Haze sort of couple.

Anyway, I'd first arrived at his house quite a bit earlier. It's a modest house, in a modest, suburban street in Oxford. Inside, it is all doggy smells, and absolutely full of... stuff. This house makes Tony Benn's place look like something out of Wallpaper*. Books, papers, bric-a-brac, junk, pugs... they spill and teeter and "plff" everywhere. Spaces have to be cleared just to sit down. "Millie, off that chair! You'll have to just shove her off, I'm afraid." He says he's always embarrassed when people come over "because then I can see how truly squalid it is".

He works, actually, in a shed in the garden. Would I like to see it? You bet, I say. So off we go, through the garden, which is a great, muddy tangle of weeds and dog whotsit. "Mind the crap!" Philip cries cheerfully. I ask him if he's ever thought about putting himself up for Ground Force. A bit of blue decking here. A water feature there. A pug-a-loo behind that bush. Could make all the difference. "Ohh," he says, excitedly. "Could you put a word in?"

We reach the shed, which is, well, a shed. Inside, it is falling-off curtains and peeling old wallpaper and so much more stuff, you can't actually turn round in it. "It's the Iris Murdoch school of decoration," he says. Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen? "Ohh, could you put a word in?" He thinks, actually, he and Jude might move soon, to somewhere bigger. After years as a teacher and then a writer who made a living, but not a substantial one, it is very nice to have money, at last. "I used to think the acme of wealth was being able to buy any book when and where you wanted it." And you can now? "Yes." Still, it hasn't all gone to his head. Lunch, when it comes, is toasted Mother's Pride with Marmite. Or would I prefer jam? I'm not saying it doesn't do. It does. I'm just saying that as far as phenomenally successful, mega-selling authors go, he is very un-Barbara Taylor Bradford-esque. She seems a very fragrant, Haze sort of person. Possibly, she never travels anywhere without it.

Whatever, in this shed, Philip does three pages of writing, in longhand, on A4 paper, every morning. Some mornings, it doesn't come as easily as others, but he always persists. "When you go to the doctor with a broken bone, he doesn't say, 'Sorry, I can't deal with that today, I've got doctor's block'. So why should writers get writer's block?" That said, though, he hasn't written since winning the Whitbread prize. It's the first time a book ostensibly for children (a lot of adults have co-opted The Amber Spyglass) has ever won the Whitbread. Was he nervous on the night? "I was in quite a Zen-like state, actually," he says, "because, by that point, there wasn't anything I could do about it. I couldn't suddenly gallop that much faster."

Now, though, there are so many fan letters to reply to. Up to 50 a day. It's flattering and everything but, still, it'll be nice when they fall off a bit and he can get back to what he does. He thinks his next book will be a picture book for younger children. He's hoping to illustrate it himself, has been to life-drawing classes. Trouble is, he can now only draw naked people. He wonders: "Do you think there's a market for a children's book of nudes?" Absolutely, I say. I think, even, that Peter Hitchens has put his name down for a copy already.

We talk sheds. Didn't Roald Dahl, I ask, work in a shed? Yes, he says, but he's not a great fan of Dahl. "On the whole, I don't enjoy his books. There's a degree of interest in cruelty that I find off-putting." Enid Blyton? I tell him I used to love Enid Blyton when I was a kid. Indeed, for years my dearest wish was to be dispatched to St Clare's or Malory Towers so I could exclaim "wicked!" when I made it into the lacrosse team and could then go and do something horrid to someone called Gwendolyn. He says that when he used to train teachers, and they said they'd loved Enid Blyton, he'd send them off to read her again. And? "They'd come back and say, 'We never realised it was such absolute trash'."

I must look pitifully crestfallen, because he then quickly adds: "I quite liked Noddy, though. When I was about five, I read a story about Noddy and Big- Ears building a house, and Noddy wanted to put the roof up before the walls because it was raining. I thought that very funny."

Pullman is no Dahl. Or Blyton. He is something else entirely. But I wasn't looking forward to reading The Amber Spyglass, the third book in the His Dark Materials trilogy, which began with Northern Lights and continued with The Subtle Knife. I was dreading it, in fact. I hate "adventure fantasy" books. Truly, I'd rather eat my fist and sell my children into prostitution and have sex with Michael Fish than read "adventure fantasy". The thing is, I tell him, if it's fantasy and anything can happen, then I always think it doesn't really count somehow, and promptly lose interest. I like realism, and lots of lacrosse. "I know what you mean," he says. "The moment magic comes into it, it's sort of cheating?"

That's it. Exactly. He doesn't think his magic is quite like that, though. He hopes it's more an extension of the characters. "Plus, of course, I sometimes make sure the magic just doesn't work."

Now, while I hated the Chronicles of Narnia

Review by Michael Cheang

The New Cut Gang books

Set in 1894 in the British town of Lambeth, the New Cut Gang stories are reminiscent of Enid Blyton

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.

Golden touch

It was during his time as a teacher that Pullman began to write children's stories, although his first published novel was for adults.

He eventually left teaching to write full-time and still composes his novels in a shed at the bottom of his garden in Oxford.

In 1996, he won the prestigious UK children's award The Carnegie Medal for Northern Lights/The Golden Compass, the first book in the His Dark Materials trilogy.

A second instalment, The Subtle Knife, and the third, The Amber Spyglass, followed.

The Amber Spyglass was the first children's book to be awarded the Whitbread Prize in 2002, and the trilogy has been translated into more than 20 languages around the world.

The story follows Lyra Belacqua, a young half-wild orphan girl who is plunged into a fantasy world of good and evil.

But unlike books such as Harry Potter, His Dark Materials explores deeper and darker moral territory.

The trilogy has sold more than each of the four Harry Potter books.

The series will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 during January and the trilogy is also being made into a play which premi

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.

Other awards for entertainment figures include a CBE for film director Stephen Daldry, whose movie "The Hours" won an Oscar for star Nicole Kidman, and a DBE, otherwise known as a Dame, for veteran actress Joan Plowright. There were OBEs for comedian Roy Hudd, TV and radio host Nicholas Parsons, actress Penelope Wilton, actor Pete Postlethwaite, author Philip Pullman and "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" presenter Chris Tarrant. Author Philip Pullman won a CBE.

This year's honours list was dominated by the world champion rugby team, with every member winning an award and Coach Clive Woodward becoming Sir Clive.

[

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.

People talking on TV about books they admire? What could be better, asks Philip Pullman

The first thing to say, without any equivocation, is that I

The next thing is to point out how many of the critics who condemned the whole thing have missed the point. To rage with disapproval because Middlemarch wasn

The Sunday Times reports that:

"Art Spiegelman, the Pulitzer prize-winning artist, discusses his work with novelist Philip Pullman, at the ICA, The Mall, SW1, December 18, 6.45pm,

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."

[

He likes fireworks - he scattered his stepfather's ashes via 40 rockets. But it is in children's minds that Philip Pullman really ignites a spark. He talks to Dina Rabinovitch

Had you been in the Firth of Forth last May, on an evening after it rained all day but then suddenly the skies cleared, you might have seen a deeply pagan sight. For that was the night Philip Pullman, with his step- and half-siblings, said a final farewell to the ashes of his stepfather. Forty spoonfuls of ashes, as it happens, each carefully poured and sealed into 40 fireworks, to be detonated by the assembled family.

"We couldn't decide," says Pullman. "What should we do with the ashes? Bury him at sea, scatter him over the hills? No particular reason to do either."

He sits in his winged chair, legs outstretched, master storyteller poised. Trademark red shoelaces in his brown suede boots, he toys with a whittling knife. In the middle of his study, a jumble of organised piles, is the head and shoulders of a wooden horse Pullman is carving for his first grandchild. Labelled dreamy and impractical as a child, he has rebelliously turned himself into a carpenter. Despite his lack of formal teaching - he follows manuals - his horse's head is so good you can't help but run fingers across the wooden folds of mane.

"I thought," Pullman continues, his tones level, telling the tale of the ashes, "wouldn't it be a good idea to send him up in a rocket, in a firework? And the others all thought, yeah, what a good idea. So my sister - who knows absolutely everyone who's anyone - found a firework-maker in Edinburgh, and said, 'Can you help?' and he said 'Yes.'"

For the quantity of ashes, the firework-maker made up a consignment of 40 rockets, dispensing ashes by spoon into each firework. "And you know," says Pullman, "it was great. We said a few words and then lit the rockets, and up they went, and it was the most wonderful display, and the sky was full of dad, full of stars."

Partly it is an extraordinary episode because it is so unusual, but that it should be Pullman's story is remarkable. It is almost an exact reversal of events in his trilogy, His Dark Materials, when the dead are pulled back into the land of the living, but on arrival explode into particles of matter. So when Pullman blew up his stepfather's ashes, he was living in a world of his own creation.

Pullman has been telling stories all his life, to siblings and then to the children he taught. After school, he would write in the evenings. Now no longer a teacher, he has the kindly but authoritative manner of those with clerics in their background. He is warm, too. He writes an autograph for my daughter, with the phrase "Wan Fu". He takes great pains over spelling her name right, chasing round the house for Tippex when he makes a mistake. It takes weeks to find out what Wan Fu means; no one knows, so bumping into Pullman after the opening night of his play at the National, I ask him. "Oh," he laughs, "it means '100,000 blessings'."

His grandfather, a parish priest, was a big influence. His father died when he was eight, and his mother remarried. Pullman's real dad was in the RAF, returning home only occasionally, smelling of beer and cigarettes, to swing his two boys up on his shoulders and then vanish again. His mother, he says, was "strange and difficult". Shortly after she remarried, when Pullman was nine, his grandfather told him: "Your mother is an unhappy woman and you must make allowances for her." Quite a burden for a nine-year-old, then. "I think he was trying to say she wouldn't have an easy life with my stepfather," says Pullman, "because he was an odd man, eccentric. But I dramatised it - made myself feel terribly important."

His mother, brought up in the 30s, was not educated; her parents only sent her brother to school. Her life, says her son, felt like a series of missed opportunities. For Pullman, the consequence was that she was very hard to please. "She died before I had any success with my books. She thought I was a failure."

JK Rowling and Pullman together dominate children's fiction. This is a capricious market, and Pullman's stories are seen as intellectually sounder, the more heavyweight read in a world where children's fiction is read by adults. The film of His Dark Materials is being scripted by Tom Stoppard. And the play has just begun its run at the National Theatre in London - two parts, each three hours long. Last Saturday, I saw the first preview, playing to a packed Olivier Theatre. It is a beautiful production, the daemons of the novels criss-crossing the stage with shafts of light, tissue paper creations lit from the inside.

Afterwards, people filed out past the tired-looking man in red socks, sitting with his wife. Pullman looked emotionally stunned, his face showing the impact of watching his words brought to life with the full might of the Olivier's huge chunks of stage which can be raised and lowered and wheeled round at the director's will.

When Pullman was interviewed for this article the production was still in rehearsal. But Northern Lights (first volume of the trilogy) had just come out on the Observer list of the hundred best novels. Ever. ("You have to laugh," says Pullman. "Or you run the risk of becoming conceited.")

If all that didn't fuel a chap's vanity, Pullman has also been labelled anti-God because his good guys take on God. This, though, is to misread His Dark Materials, which tells the story of Lyra. In his trilogy, Lyra re-enacts the story of the original Eve. He takes, I say, the Jewish view of Eve. Namely, that what happened in the Garden of Eden was the beginning of the world as we know it (the story appears in Bereishit, the beginning of the Five Books of Moses, for that reason), and not the great Fall, or end of all good, which is the Christian version. "Exactly right," says Pullman.

Still, getting the label anti-God has added an edge to Pullman's intellectual credibility, which may account for the huge interest in the Lyra story. His Dark Materials, rich as it is in incident and invention, is not one of the greatest novels of all time. The characterisation is mostly two-dimensional, and the description of dawning teenage sexuality makes Britney Spears' PR sound realistic. His Dark Materials - too long by half - is not even Pullman's best work.

But as Pullman himself might say, you have to laugh at the claim - made by others first, but repeated by Pullman on Radio 4's Start the Week - that he has rewritten Paradise Lost. Not every story of rebellion against authority is Miltonic. Or, to take another example, Ulysses is a rewriting of the Odyssey; Judith Kerr's Mog goes to the Vee, Eee, Tee (also the story of a departure from, and then a return to, home) is not.

In His Dark Materials, Pullman has written a children's adventure story, and to make larger claims for it is to undervalue the true distinction of Pullman's writing: his narrative gift, at once arresting and spirit-lifting. Like fireworks across a Scottish sky at night.

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The following article is an excerpt from an article I found on the George Macdonald WWW Page. The article itself is about the second Harry Potter book, the Chamber of Secrets. When discussing th character Gilderoy Lockhart, the author writes:

So who is the real life model for Gilderoy Lockhart? My guess is Philip Pullman, author of The Dark Materials trilogy and many other, much admired children's books. I have a few reasons for guessing Pullman, some good, some silly. Let's start with the 'off the wall' stuff.

1) Every person I have met or read that loves his books (to include my daughters) is female. Here are a couple of raves from reviews written in the New York Times - by women:

"War, politics, magic, science, individual lives and cosmic destinies are all here. They are not flung together, they are shaped and assembled into a narrative of tremendous pace by a man with a generous, precise intelligence. If you are going to preface your books with passages from Milton, Rilke and John Ashbery, then you had better write well. Pullman does. His prose has texture and flexibility, like excellent fabric. And he gives us so much. Suspense of course, but such degrees of pleasure, excitement (the excitement of meeting characters, not just adventurers) and grief. And such joy - the joy of thinking, of testing your senses and feelings, of knowing your imagination is entering worlds not dreamed of in the usual philosophies" (Margo Jefferson, 'Harry Potter for Grown-Ups', NYT, 20 January, 2002).

"One can only hope that where Pullman leads [the children] will follow, and discover the dissenting tradition from which these books spring. This is remarkable writing: courageous and dangerous, as the best art should be. Pullman envisions a world without God, but not without hope" (Erica Wagner, Times of London, quoted NYT, 'The Man who Dared Make Religion the Villain', 6 November 2000).

2) His Dark Materials trilogy was 'big news' and Pullman a star at English book fairs when Harry Potter was still just a new title from a small publishing house - and it is at one of those events that Rowling is said to have met her 'Lockhart' model; and

3) One of the lead characters in more than one of Pullman's books is named Sallie Lockhart.

Onto more serious reasons for Rowling to choose Pullman as her 'Man Without Chest' Lockhart model:

1) Pullman feels nothing but disdain for C. S. Lewis and the 'Narnia School' of Children's fiction.

"Mr. Pullman's book offers an explicit alternative to C.S.Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, with their pervasive Christian message. In the Narnia books, nestled inside the delightful stories of talking animals, heroic challenges and whimsical scenes, the meaning is clear: the heroes find true happiness only after death, when their spiritual superiority buys them passage to heaven.

"It is a conclusion with which Mr. Pullman thoroughly disagrees. "When you look at what C. S. Lewis is saying, his message is so antilife, so cruel, so unjust," he said. "The view that the Narnia books have for the material world is one of almost undisguised contempt. At one point, the old professor says, 'It's all in Plato' - meaning that the physical world we see around us is the crude, shabby, imperfect, second-rate copy of something much better."

"Instead, Mr. Pullman argues for a "republic of heaven" where people live as fully and richly as they can because there is no life beyond. "I wanted to emphasize the simple physical truth of things, the absolute primacy of the material life, rather than the spiritual or the afterlife," he said" (Sarah Lyall, NYT, 6 Nov 2000).

"He opposes the tradition of children's literature as Christian allegory, made famous by the Narnia Chronicles of C. S. Lewis. He is a disciple of that sensual visionary William Blake. And by revising (as Blake did) Milton's theology of Paradise lost and regained, he is paying tribute to Milton the poet and political dissident. He thinks it's dangerous to believe that innocence is at its best when untouched by experience. Or that morality is at its purest when untouched by joy" (Margo Jefferson, NYT, 20 Jan 2002)

2) Pullman is a public atheist and despiser of organized religion.

"Shockingly, Mr. Pullman, a 53-year-old former schoolteacher, has created a world in which organized religion - or, at least, what organized religion has become - is the enemy and its agents are the misguided villains

The following article comes from the Independent, and also mentions Philip Pullman:

John Le Carr

Le Carr

The author's His Dark Materials trilogy has sold more than 2.5 million copies and its National Theatre adaptation is breaking Christmas box-office records. He hooks children with stories that draw from Milton, Blake, mythology and the book of Genesis. So can he save a nation bewitched by the cheap tricks of Harry Potter?

Philip Pullman is a one-man phenomenon. The first writer to win the Whitbread Prize for Literature with a children's book, sales of his trilogy His Dark Materials now top two and a half million, with copies translated into 30 languages. When he appears on public platforms, the event is inevitably sold out. The two-part adaptation of his work to be staged at the National Theatre in London this Christmas has already taken more than a million pounds in pre-performance bookings - a house record. And there is the promise of a film version, scripted by Sir Tom Stoppard. Not bad for an ex-teacher living in Oxford in his mid-50s, with no outstanding commercial success before the publication of Northern Lights in 1996, the first of the sequence of three fantasy novels that have made his name.

His success gives the lie to any idea that we are all, adults and children, part of a steady process of dumbing down. While Harry Potter represents the less demanding side of fantasy, Pullman offers readers a far more challenging but equally exciting read. There are references in HDM to Milton, Blake, Keats, Dante and Greek mythology, not to mention quantum physics and superstring theory. But at other times, the mood changes from the elevated to affectionately nostalgic borrowings from Edward Ardizzone's Little Tim stories, Richmal Crompton's Just William and Tove Jansson's Moomin tales.

The basic plot of HDM is a rewriting of the book of Genesis, with Eve now shown as doing the right thing when she decides to eat the forbidden fruit and so break away from ignorant innocence. She is represented by Lyra, a modern 11-year-old girl living in an Oxford very like the real thing but with a number of important differences. Her Adam is a boy called Will who comes from today's world but is able to cut his way into alternative universes. Up against them is the malignant power of organised religion, pictured as a ruthless, Calvinistic despotism anxious to nip all damaging heresies in the bud. Lyra's parents are little help, with her father close to Milton's Satan and her mother a stand-in for the wicked Queen in Snow White. The children have to rely instead on a collection of benign witches, angels, talking bears, and insect-sized courtiers, not to mention an American aviator, a barge full of water gypsies and an Oxford don fired from her post for discovering secrets intended to stay hidden.

All the characters in Lyra's world possess their own daemons - a visible, accompanying spirit that can turn into any animal shape at will, a severe technical challenge for the actors at the National. When asked what his own daemon might have looked like, Pullman has suggested a magpie. This image is duly reproduced by the wood engraver John Lawrence at the start of Pullman's recently published Lyra's Oxford, a slight but tantalising after-thought to HDM. The magpie is an apt symbol of Pullman's wide range of interests, which go from drawing - he provided all the chapter headings for HDM - to playing the guitar, watching Neighbours and, currently, carving his own rocking-horse. Of HDM, he says, "I have stolen ideas from every book I have ever read." Other moments of inspiration came from films, a Finnish phone directory and from strolling round Lake Bled in Slovenia, where the constant rumble of overtaking skateboarders gave him the notion of the "mulefa", elephant-like animals that use giant oiled seed pods as their means of locomotion.

So how did this big, warm-hearted, generous man, devoted to his wife and two sons, turn into such a critical and popular success? Born in 1946 to an RAF family constantly on the move, he began early as a storyteller, entertaining his younger brother with lurid tales every night after the lights went out. He began writing for real the day he left Exeter College in Oxford - the model for Jordan College in HDM, where Lyra lives as a child - and has produced three pages a day ever since. Working as a teacher, again in Oxford, he was quickly put in charge of the school play, some of which he then wrote. Several of his earlier books derive from these plays, and there were also four novels set in the late 19th century featuring Sally Lockhart - Britain's first unmarried mother detective. Drenched in a Sherlock Holmesian atmosphere, these novels allowed Pullman to revel in the historical detail conjured up by descriptions of contemporary inventions and advertisements, some real, others invented.

His breakthrough arose from lunch with his editor, David Fickling, and Pullman's casual suggestion of rewriting Milton's Paradise Lost for a modern audience. Once launched into the story, everything he most believed in came into play. His conviction of the power of story to transform lives was harnessed to a tale where Old Testament habits of mind are finally vanquished in favour of his own brand of liberal humanism. His curiosity about modern quantum theory linked naturally to a plot where characters move between the parallel universes that some theorists now believe to be a philosophical possibility. His love of Greek mythology became integrated with a powerful warning against the slow destruction of the natural world which we are all part of, both in life and death. His hatred of authoritarianism was personified by two child characters brave enough to stand up to terrible dangers in pursuit of what they know to be right.

There are contradictions too. Pullman is a man of out-size likes and dislikes, and while on the left, is a passionate critic of the Government's policies on the teaching of literacy. Brought up as a Christian by his beloved clergyman grandfather, he depicts all his priestly characters as canting Pharisees or worse. Disliking organised religion, Pullman is still fascinated by the story of the Creation, which many of his younger readers might otherwise have heard little about. After his two young characters finally fall in love with each other, he then makes it impossible for them to stay together, since each must return to their own world.

But it is not the theological arguments and occasional quirks that probably most attract readers. His powerful trilogy touches on the great issues common to all human imagination. Eternal oppositions such as love and hate, loyalty and betrayal, life and death, truth and lies, courage and cowardice are common themes in the experience of his main characters. In epic style, these leave the security of home in the quest of something far greater than themselves whatever the danger - a plot as old as Beowulf, but as resonant as ever. Stories have always had the capacity to show us the best as well as the worst of ourselves. This particular one, told by a master drawing on skills and experience built up over years of patient apprenticeship, proves irresistible on the printed page, not to mention any future triumphs on stage or screen.

The writer is author of 'Darkness Visible. Inside the World of Philip Pullman', Wizard Books,