Philip Pullman On Oxford

Charlie Rose is without doubt the best interviewer on TV, and the guests he has on his PBS show simply are an eclectic lot. My schedule does not always provide time for me to see all his interviews, but I eventually get around to them in some format or media.

Last night’s guest was English author Philip Pullman, whose book “The Golden Compass” has been made into a movie. I got a kick out of hearing Mr. Pullman talk about Oxford, England, where he has taught. He spoke about falling in love with the town years ago.

I fell in love with it, too. I visited it at least once when I was a lowly GI stationed in Germany. Alfred Endlich, one of my Army buddies, took tours all over Europe in 1970. One of the stops was the university town of Oxford. We had a delightful lunch there and visited one of the colleges at Oxford.

Americans who win Rhodes scholarships, Americans such as Bill Clinton and editorialist Ed Yoder, are fortunate indeed.

Mr. Pullman has written, “I was born in Norwich in 1946, and educated in England, Zimbabwe, and Australia, before my family settled in North Wales. I received my secondary education at the excellent Ysgol Ardudwy, Harlech, and then went to Exeter College, Oxford, to read English, though I never learned to read it very well.

"I found my way into the teaching profession at the age of 25, and taught at various Oxford Middle Schools before moving to Westminster College in 1986, where I spent eight years involved in teaching students on the B.Ed. course.

“ I have maintained a passionate interest in education, which leads me occasionally to make foolish and ill-considered remarks alleging that not everything is well in our schools. My main concern is that an over-emphasis on testing and league tables has led to a lack of time and freedom for a true, imaginative and humane engagement with literature.

"My views on education are eccentric and unimportant, however. My only real claim to anyone's attention lies in my writing. I've published nearly twenty books, mostly of the sort that are read by children, though I'm happy to say that the natural audience for my work seems to be a mixed one - mixed in age, that is, though the more mixed in every other way as well, the better. 

"My first children's book was Count Karlstein (1982, republished in 2002). That was followed by The Ruby in the Smoke (1986), the first in a quartet of books featuring the young Victorian adventurer, Sally Lockhart. I did a great deal of research for the background of these stories, and I don't intend to let it lie unused, so there will almost certainly be more of them.

"I've also written a number of shorter stories which, for want of a better term, I call fairy tales. They include The Firework-Maker's Daughter, I Was a Rat!, and Clockwork, or All Wound Up. This is a kind of story I find very enjoyable, though immensely difficult to write.

However, my most well-known work is the trilogy His Dark Materials, beginning with Northern Lights (The Golden Compass in the USA) in 1995, continuing with The Subtle Knife in 1997, and concluding with The Amber Spyglass in 2000. These books have been honoured by several prizes, including the Carnegie Medal, the Guardian Children's Book Award, and (for The Amber Spyglass) the Whitbread Book of the Year Award - the first time in the history of that prize that it was given to a children's book.

"I was the 2002 recipient of the Eleanor Farjeon Award for children's literature. At the award ceremony for that prize, which I was very proud to receive, I promised to spend my time in future making fewer speeches and writing more books.

"When I'm not writing books I like to draw and to make things out of wood. I also like to play the piano. I'd like to play it well, but I can't, so the rest of the family has to put up with my playing it badly.”