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Sir Philip Nicholas Outram Pullman is an English writer. He is best known for the fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials. The first volume, Northern Lights (1995), won the Carnegie Medal and later the "Carnegie of Carnegies". The third volume, The Amber Spyglass (2000), won the Whitbread Award. In 2017, he started a companion trilogy, The Book of Dust, of which the final novel, The Rose Field, was pub…
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culture · English author (born 1946) · writer · novelist · university teacher · playwright · librarian · children's writer · executive producer · audiobook narrator · screenwriter · teacher · also Philip Pullman, Sir Philip Pullman, Sir Philip Nicholas Outram Pullman, Pullman
Born 19 October 1946 · Q190220
63 published statements · 0 followers
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if you really want complete freedom of choice, complete openness of information, where nobody is spying on you, no one is selling your presence to advertisers, the only place to find it is a library, where they keep books.
85%The Guardian
“Not least because this is the place where he wrote the words now often sung as an alternative (and better) national anthem, the poem known as Jerusalem: ‘And did those feet in ancient time’. Blake’s feet walked in Felpham. Let’s not let this opportunity pass by.”
“if you really want complete freedom of choice, complete openness of information, where nobody is spying on you, no one is selling your presence to advertisers, the only place to find it is a library, where they keep books.”
“She is the goddess of the dead. She comes to you smiling and kindly, and you know it is time to die.”
“That is how it seems....But we can’t read the darkness, Mr. Scoresby. It is more than possible that I might be wrong.”
“a Church of England atheist, and a 1662 Book of Common Prayer atheist, because that”
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“All the time, you see, the council had been longing to improve the library service, and the only thing standing in the way was – the libraries.”
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“It would be nice to think that normal human curiosity would let us open our minds to experience from every quarter, to listen to every storyteller in the marketplace. It would be nice too, occasionally, to read a review of an adult book that said,”
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“the writers we call the greatest of all – Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Proust, George Eliot herself, are those who have created the most lifelike simulacra of real human beings in real human situations. In fact the more profound and powerful the imagination, the closer to reality are the forms it dreams up.”
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“Personally, I feel they got the initials right but not the name. I don”
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“What I hope is that the stories I write will entertain both the young readers and the older ones. What I don”
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“a hero, steeped in glamour, killed in action defending his country”
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“Given what we now know about British behaviour during the insurgency, my father probably doesn”
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The Guardian: Philip Pullman and Maggie O’Farrell among authors urging Burnham to cut business rates on bookshops
The Guardian: Truth in fantasy: what Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials taught us over its 30-year run
The Guardian: The Firework-Maker’s Daughter review – Philip Pullman’s fairytale is explosive fun
The Guardian: The Rose Field by Philip Pullman – nail-biting conclusion to the Northern Lights series
The Guardian: Lyra’s last story – exclusive extract from Philip Pullman’s final instalment in The Book of Dust trilogy
The Guardian: Philip Pullman announces The Rose Field, the final part of Lyra’s story
“My principle when researching a novel is”
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The Guardian: Northern Lights by Philip Pullman audiobook review – a mesmerising reading by Ruth Wilson
The Guardian: ‘Every school should have a library’: Philip Pullman calls for new UK laws
Pullman expressed concern at the Royal Society of Literature's alleged 'censorship' of Israeli criticism in its magazine
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These illustrations were published as fine art limited-edition letterpress prints by Electric Works in San Francisco, California
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The Guardian: Philip Pullman: ‘I had to grow up before I could cope with Middlemarch’
Awarded Knight Bachelor (2019).
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“The place religion has in our lives is a permanent one.”
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Started a companion trilogy, The Book of Dust, of which the final novel, The Rose Field, was published in October 2025
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A collection of his lectures and essays were published as Daemon Voices: On Stories and Storytelling
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Including a run at the Edinburgh Festival, finishing at the Brighton Fringe in 2017
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To buy the Sussex cottage where the poet lived between 1800 and 1803, saying: Surely it isn't beyond the resources of a nation that can spend enormous amounts of money on acts of folly and unnecessary warfare, a nation t
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Pullman supported the Let Books Be Books campaign to stop children's books being labelled as "for girls" or "for boys", saying: "I'm against anything, from age-ranging to pinking and blueing, whose effect is to shut the
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Was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Bath
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Pullman was elected President of the Society of Authors – the "ultimate honour" awarded by the British writers' body, and a position first held by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
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“one of the best treatments a story of [his had] ever received.”
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During a break from writing The Book of Dust, Pullman was asked by Penguin Classics to curate 50 of Grimms' classic fairytales, from their compendium of over 200 stories
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Pullman gave the Philippa Pearce Lecture
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Was given a services to Humanism award by the British Humanist Association for his contribution as a longstanding supporter
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Pullman was a patron of the Palestine Festival of Literature, where he said "Every literary act, whether it is a great epic poem or an honest piece of journalism or a simple nonsense tale for children is a blow against t
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The Atlantic described Pullman's Jesus in The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ as "a proper republican in the Pullman sense of the word: instinctively fraternal and anti-institutional, spreading his rough-and-read
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Awarded honorary doctorate presented by The Open University (2008).
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Authored "The Adventures of John Blake" for the British children's comic The DFC with artist John Aggs and began The Book of Dust, a companion trilogy to His Dark Materials
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Pullman led a campaign against the introduction of age bands on the covers of children's books, saying: "It's based on a one-dimensional view of growth, which regards growing older as moving along a line like a monkey cl
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The Times named Pullman one of the "50 greatest British writers since 1945"
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No information has been released regarding an adaptation of The Tiger in the Well
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Was one of five finalists for the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Medal, and he was the British nominee again in 2012
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Awarded Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (2005).
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Pullman won the annual Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award from the Swedish Arts Council, recognising his career contribution to "children's and young adult literature in the broadest sense"
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Awarded Commander of the Order of the British Empire (2004).
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Caldecott had also described Pullman's work as "axe-grinding" and "a kind of Luciferian enterprise"
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The trilogy ranked third in the BBC's The Big Read, a poll of 200 top novels voted by the British public
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Awarded Eleanor Farjeon Award (2002).
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The Catholic Herald published an article by Sarah Johnson that compared Pullman to a "playground bully" whose work "attacks a religious minority"
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To coincide with the Golden Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, Pullman was interviewed for a feature in The Guardian on notable republicans
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Awarded Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (2001).
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Was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
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Leonie Caldecott cited Pullman's work as an example of fiction "far more worthy of the bonfire than Harry [Potter]" on the grounds that "[by] co-opting Catholic terminology and playing with Judaeo-Christian theological c
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Awarded Guardian Children's Fiction Prize for Northern Lights (1996).
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Awarded Nestlé Children's Book Prize for The Firework-Maker's Daughter (1996).
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Continuing to deliver talks and write occasionally for The Guardian, including writing and lecturing about education, often criticising unimaginative education policies
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Won Carnegie Medal for Northern Lights (1995).
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Studied at Exeter College (1965–1968).
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When Pullman was seven, and was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC)
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Born 1946-10-19.
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