Biography philip pullman atheist

This interview is chiefly concerned with the trilogy His Dark Materials. Inevitably, it gives away some important turns of the plot.

A lot of people known as children’s writers seem to have had irregular or disturbed childhoods.

Biography philip pullman atheist

Was that the case with you?

Well, my father, who was an RAF officer, died when I was seven, during the Mau Mau rising in Kenya – we were told he was killed in combat, but I’ve never really got to the bottom of what happened – and for a while then my brother and I lived with my mother’s parents in Norfolk.

And then she married again and with my stepfather (who was also an RAF officer) we went to Australia for a couple of years, and then to Wales. And then I grew up and went to university.

What were the values that were instilled into you?

The conventional middle-class ones of the time.

My grandfather was a clergyman and so every Sunday I went to Sunday school and church. I was confirmed, I was a member of the choir, all that sor