HisDarkMaterials.org

Philip Pullman has posted another news item on his website. He talks about his visit to the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, the stage play, the Book of Dust etc.

Read Philip Pullman's April message.

Philip Pullman will be attending the Cheltenham Science Festival on the 10th of June, to discuss the 'The Science of Belief' with Robert Winston, the presenter of BBC’s The History of God.

Click here for more information.

Philip Pullman will join in at the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival held between Sunday, April 10 and Sunday, April 17 in Oxford.

In just three weeks’ time, the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival will swing into unmissable action. Between Sunday, April 10 and Sunday, April 17, the historic city of Oxford will provide the stunning location for one of the country’s most successful, entertaining and high-profile celebrations of the written word.

His Dark Materials author Philip Pullman won the world’s largest children’s literature prize today.

He beat 117 authors, illustrators and reading promoters from around the world who were nominated for the prize.

The award was created in the name of Astrid Lindgren, the Swedish author who died in 2002 at the age of 94.

Stockholm, Sweden -- Japanese illustrator Ryoji Arai and British author Philip Pullman were named the winners of the third annual Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award for Literature on Wednesday.

Both authors were invited to Stockholm to collect the $732,515 prize from Crown Princess Victoria on May 25.

Established by the Swedish government, the prize is presented annually to promote children's literature and books focusing on the rights of children. The committee received 118 nominations for this year's prize.

Philip Pullman on Jericho's boat canals:

I love the curious and indeed somewhat gamy character of Jericho and the Oxford canal; it's always seemed to me like a window opening on a quite different world from the academic propriety of its near neighbour, north Oxford. It's a watery, raffish, amiable, trickster-like world of boat-dwellers, horse-dealers and alchemists. The character of this part of Oxford is very ancient, quite unmistakable, entirely unique, and now, alas, in some peril.

Reading aloud to family and friends was once an integral part of social life. Sadly, even for children, it has become a lot less common. Yet taking in a story through the eyes rather than the ears is a recent thing. If the earliest stories were oral, told around a fire or by a travelling bard, the biblical tales were read by preacher or pastor to a congregation, and by the head of the family at home.

A hundred years ago, families would gather to listen to anything from Dickens to the daily newspaper being read aloud; now, there is a widening gulf between those who grow up feeling that books, and stories, are an integral part of living in a community, and those who don’t. We have turned to other forms of storytelling such as film and television, in which every detail is fleshed out. Yet the hunger to be read to is a part of the attraction of literary festivals.

Author Philip Pullman today condemned a plan to scrap a boatyard which inspired passages of the bestselling His Dark Materials trilogy.

Castle Mill boatyard in Jericho, Oxford, is, in Pullman’s fictional world, home to the gyptians, a group of boat people who live on the water and befriend Lyra Belacqua, the main character in the books.

The boatyard’s tenant, Steve Goodlad, who runs a business building and maintaining boats, had been asked by owners British Waterways to move out by today but is refusing to go and could face eviction.

The Government is facing a backlash from some of the most important figures in British culture, who accuse it of betraying promises to support the arts.

In a move that will alarm ministers just weeks before an expected general election, arts leaders have spoken over their concerns about the potentially devastating impact of a spending freeze.

Ruth Mackenzie, the Government's former special adviser to the Department for Culture, and the heads of some of Britain's most prestigious cultural institutions, including the National Theatre and the Tate, fear a return to the stop-go funding of the Conservatives that wreaked devastation in galleries, concert halls and theatres during the 1980s and 1990s.

Philip Pullman has opened a monthly online journal feature on his website Philip-Pullman.com to keep in touch with anyone who's interested.

I'm going to try and do this regularly from now on - write a piece here every month, to establish a bit more contact with people than I've managed to do so far. The first thing I have to say is thank you all for your emails. I read them all, but I haven't got the time to answer every one. It's very helpful to me to know what things are concerning you, what you're interested in, and what effect the various bits of journalism I do are having.

There's no more news yet on the film scene. But no news is not bad news. I know that New Line are taking great care to find the best director possible; it would be silly to rush things. There's no hurry. One thing I can't do is compel the director (whoever that is) to use your designs, your music, or your acting talent. The normal route is the best one, I'm afraid.

Read the full article.

Join the Philip-Pullman.com Mailing List and keep up to date!

Philip Pullman has been chosen 'Greatest Briton' in the art category at a ceremony held yesterday.

Asked about his award, the writer, former teacher and winner of the Whitbread prize in 2002, Mr Pullman said: "I feel rather shifty about it because I've never thought that what I do is about me."

He added: "It's about my work. I would love to be thought of as writing great books, but I am not great."

The creator of the world wide web Sir Tim Berners-Lee was named 'Great Briton 2004'.

Click Read more to read the full article.

Letters from the Guardian readers show different reactions toward Pullman's stance on grammar.

What good sense Philip Pullman wrote (Common sense has much to learn from moonshine, January 22). I'd much rather have good sense than common, just as I'd rather my English were not merely "plain". Just as Pullman argues against the massed ranks of the common-sense grammarians in the education system, who are stifling the creative playfulness of our schoolchildren, I would apply similar arguments to the adult world.

It's time English teachers got back to basics - less grammar, more play

The report published this week by the University of York on its research into the teaching of grammar will hardly surprise anyone who has thought about the subject. The question being examined was whether instruction in grammar had any effect on pupils' writing. It included the largest systematic review yet of research on this topic; and the conclusion the authors came to was that there was no evidence at all that the teaching of grammar had any beneficial effect on the quality of writing done by pupils.

Needless to say, this goes against common sense. That particular quality of mind, the exclusive property of those on the political right, enables its possessors to know without the trouble of thinking that of course teaching children about syntax and the parts of speech will result in better writing, as well as making them politer, more patriotic and less likely to become pregnant.

Following on from this news article, Philip Pullman is in the final shortlist for The Telegraph's Great Britons award. The eventual winner "will be announced on January 27, 2005, in a ceremony at the Royal Courts of Justice."

Philip Pullman has been at SrafCon 2005!

As promised, Mr. Pullman stopped by, both at the forum and the chat room!

Click here for the forum discussion and here for the chat room transcript.