HisDarkMaterials.org

The new year will bring the 250th anniversary of the birth of William Blake. Philip Pullman explains how the writer and artist has inspired his work, and his life.

"What I've come to cherish most of all in Blake, as I've grown older, is a quality that (to use his own term) I have to call prophetic. It is prophetic in two senses: it foretells, and, like the words of the Old Testament prophets, it warns, it carries a moral force. Furthermore, without being a Blakeian (except in the sense that I follow his own proclamation "I must create a System, or be enslav'd by another Man's"), I admit that the words of Blake have joined a very small number of other texts as the best expression of the most important things I believe. If I didn't believe them, I wouldn't be able to work. How I came to believe them is another story, but I seem to have been feeling my way towards the principles set out below all my life. When I needed to find words for them, I found that Blake had already said what I wanted to say more clearly and powerfully than I ever could."

Racism, the environment, religion, war and climate change were all up for debate at a star-studded talk in Oxford.  TV newsreader Jon Snow, Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University, hosted a panel of thinkers and doers, including the city's own Sister Frances and author Philip Pullman.

Self-confessed pessimist Philip Pullman predicted that the earth would take revenge on the human race.

He said: "We are using the earth's resources far too quickly. I think the earth is going to get rid of a large number of us quite soon.

"I think we must do something about it. We must impress on these politicians, who are so frightened of Rupert Murdoch, the tabloid press and the oil companies, the absolute necessity of doing something to stop this catastrophe.

"The human race will survive, civilisation might not, but I hope that those of us who do survive will learn something and live more slowly."

Thanks to IanG for notifying us of this event.

Luminaries including author Philip Pullman and musician Billy Bragg will take part in a lecture at Oxford Brookes University tonight [29/11/06].

Brookes' annual Chancellor's Lecture - an event open to the public and hosted by University Chancellor and journalist Jon Snow - takes place from 6pm to 7pm.

The National Film Theatre in London is hosting a special preview viewing of the first adaptation of the Sally Lockheart Series: The Ruby in the Smoke.  The event takes place on December 6, 2006.  Philip Pullman will be attending the screening and the after-show Q&A session.  Tickets can be purchased here in advance.

Thanks to Lesley for notifying us of this event.

Award-winning author Philip Pullman will deliver a public lecture on Friday 10 November at Bangor University.

The Whitbread Book of the Year winner will lecture on Strangeness & Charm, the fundamental particles of narrative, which will explore the art and science of writing.

Philip Pullman is taking a break from both writing and filming to visit the University, where he is an Honorary Fellow.

Filming began recently of his most famous work, the trilogy His Dark Materials, which promises to be a blockbuster which stars Nicole Kidman as Mrs Coulter, Dakota Blue Richards as Lyra and Tom Courtenay as Forder Corm.

Philip Pullman has posted his October message on his website.  In it, he discusses the newly released book by Dr. Laurie Frost The Elements of His Dark Materials: The Guide to Philip Pullman's Trilogy.  Pullman also highlights another visit with Shepperton Studios and a few casting details.

Casting

Sam Elliot as Lee Scoresby
Nonso Anozie as the voice of Iorek Byrnison

Pullman ties up his message saying he will continue his visits to Shepperton Studios to update fans on the movie progress.

Read Philip Pullman's October message

Children’s authors Philip Pullman and Jacqueline Rose are among those taking part in London’s first ever Swedish cultural season for children, to be launched next week.

The programme includes five productions at South Bank children’s venue The Unicorn Theatre and nine rehearsed readings of specially translated plays at venues including the National and Polka theatres.

Swedish furniture giants IKEA will transform the foyer of the Unicorn into an underwater-themed installation for the season’s launch on October 11.

The Independent published a list of 50 people who are "visionaries, idealists, prophets or moral movers and shakers - whose work was making Britain a better place in which to live."

At place 34, Philip Pullman, Children's Writer:

The author of the His Dark Materials trilogy, and many other fine books, Pullman creates worlds in which children see good as a matter of choices that are within their control. Pullman wants children to realise they are the inheritors of philosophical, artistic, scientific and literary riches. So potent is the vision of this campaigning atheist that even the Archbishop of Canterbury wants his novels taught as part of religious education in schools.

Philip Pullman will be the speaker at the opening concert of the Oxford Chamber Music Festival this year, at the Sheldonian Theatre. The festival runs from September 27-30.

Cult author Philip Pullman is to head the bill at a Liverpool literary festival to celebrate Capital of Culture year.

The writer of the His Dark Materials trilogy is the first big name to be signed up to the Liverpool University event. The festival is due to take place in November 2008 and will include local and national names taking part in readings, discussions and debates.

Philip Pullman is a bit like a bear with a sore paw, as a friend has described him. But beneath a gruff exterior he is by turns charming and patronising — although in the nicest possible way.

He is, in fact, a curious mix of defiant schoolboy, bookworm and businessman and although when I meet him he is in the middle of having lunch with some fans (they came to speak to him after a talk he gave and ended up dining together), he gracefully excuses himself and makes his way to the green room — a side room in Christ Church’s Tom Quad — to be interviewed. Pullman, who was at Exeter College, describes his own university days as, “a bit sink or swim”.

In typical Pullman style, he gives a somewhat contradictory account of his time here: “I enjoyed it, I had a great time. It was the late sixties and we did all the things that you did in the late sixties none of which I look back on with any pleasure at all. It was useless for me, this place. Or I was useless for it.

A poll conducted by "The Book Magazine" has just named Philip Pullman the sixth greatest living author in Britain. J K Rowling won the poll, followed by Terry Pratchett, but Pullman did beat our such famous writers as spy novelist John le Carre.

JK Rowling was voted the greatest living British writer in a survey published on Thursday.

The Harry Potter creator whose stories of the young wizard have sold over 300 million copies worldwide received nearly three times as many votes as Discworld author Terry Pratchett in second place.

Thirty years ago, a young biologist set out to explain some new ideas in evolutionary biology to a wider audience. But he ended up restating Darwinian theory in such a broad and forceful way that his book has influenced specialists as well.

"Richard Dawkins: How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think" is a collection of essays about Dr. Dawkins's book "The Selfish Gene" and its impact. Contributors to the book, edited by Alan Grafen and Matt Ridley, are mostly biologists but include the novelist Philip Pullman, author of "His Dark Materials," and the bishop of Oxford, Richard Harries.

This was not how British Waterways, guardian of our thousands of miles of canals and many of its rivers, wants to see itself portrayed: an enemy of boaters.

But in its dash to sell off and regenerate large numbers of waterside sites around the country, it didn’t anticipate the level of protest it has met at one small boatyard in Oxford.

Bailiffs have been called in to evict protesters occupying the 150-year-old Castle Mill boatyard in Oxford’s quirky Jericho area, to make way for yet another canalside apartment scheme, despite the protesters having prominent backers, including Philip Pullman, the best-selling author.

A writers’ union this week called on examination boards to stop endorsing GCSE and A-level textbooks, claiming that the “immoral” practice is damaging education.

Boards are profiting by selling endorsement rights to publishers, who then produce books which are so closely geared to test preparation that they are little more than crib-sheets, the writers say.

And it is feared the rise of “all you need to know” endorsed books, promising to help staff to tailor their teaching exactly to the requirements of particular tests, is killing young people’s enthusiasm for learning.