Philip Pullman: Five things we learned when he spoke to Kirsty Young

In her BBC Radio 4 podcast, Young Again, journalist and broadcaster Kirsty Young takes her guests back to meet their younger selves and asks the question: if you knew then what you know now, what would you have done differently?

The award-winning author Philip Pullman has sold tens of millions of books and is best known for the fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials, which although ostensibly written for children and young people, has also reached an enormous adult audience. He was born in Norwich but spent his childhood moving between airbases across the world as his father was a pilot in the RAF. His first adult novel was published in 1972; he began writing for children in 1982 and was named a Knight Bachelor in 2019.

Here are the things we learned when he met Kirsty Young...

1. Philip’s English teacher inspired him to become a writer

Philip’s passion for writing began when he was a child and he knew from a young age that he wanted to be a novelist. He says: “I knew I could do it. I knew it because my dear Miss Jones, who was my English teacher, used to set us all essays on all sorts of subjects. And whatever it was, I raced into it and loved writing about it. But she also let us write a story, you know, once or twice a year. And I loved that.”

“She took a delight in words. She took a little out of what they could do and she had the good sense when we were doing poetry to let us hear it first and let us read it aloud ourselves because poetry doesn't live on the page, it lives in the mouth and in the ear and that's the only way you can get at it.”

Philip’s reaction to poetry was physical: “You know, my blood moved faster, my hair stood on end, my skin bristled, all that sort of stuff.”

2. Writing is a dictatorship, reading is a democracy

Philip Pullman’s novels have legions of fans across the world, some of whom have expressed disappointment or even anger at events in novels or in particular character arcs. Kirsty asks him whether he feels burdened by the expectations of his readers.

Philip does not mince his words in describing the relationship between authors and their readers: “Writing is a dictatorship. It's a tyranny. It's not a democracy. I'm in charge of everything. I'm in charge of every comma of the life and death of every character. Nobody else can tell me what to do because, A: they don't know how the character will behave, and B: it's not their bloody story. It's my story.”

But Philip acknowledges that this is only part of the relationship between author and reader: “So, writing is a tyranny, but reading, this is where it's interesting – reading is the complete opposite. Reading is a democracy. I can't tell readers how to read, or what to read, or whether to read, or whether they must read this one first and then that one, or what this means, or what that means.”

“I'm often being asked that sort of question: “Is it alright to have a sort of Christian interpretation of this?” My answer is look, you read it in any way you like. If you want to talk about it, talk about it with someone else and have your different opinions. If you want me to join in this conversation, I can, because I too have read the book. But my vision, my view of what the book means, is no more valid than yours, just because I happen to have written it.”

3. Philip’s father died mysteriously when he was just seven

In their conversation, Kirsty and Philip discuss the sometimes unconventional responses that children can have to the unexpected and early death of a parent, Philip’s father having died when his plane crashed in Kenya.

Philip says: “We didn't know him very well. We didn't see him very often. He was always away in other countries or off in some other part of Britain. So, he was a bit of a stranger to us. I remember struggling – well not struggling – trying rather dutifully to feel sad and orphaned and things.”

“There was a mystery about my father's death,” Philip adds later on in the conversation. “He was an experienced pilot. He'd flown Spitfires in the Second World War and it was the sort of crash that a beginner would make. He crashed it into a hill. Why?”

4. There are things Philip wishes he had asked his mother before her death

The year after his father’s death, Philip’s mother remarried and she and Philip’s stepfather went on to have more children. Philip wishes he had asked his mother before her death more about what really led to his parents’ divorce: “She and my father were separating legally. And clearly there was something going on between her and the man who became my stepfather.”

“You can see it in one of these photos,” says Philip of pictures he has from the time. “There's a look passing between these two, which is caught by the photographer. And that signifies something that I didn't get at the time, of course not. But later, after she died, I realised for the first time that she was on the verge of divorce… and something had gone wrong with the marriage.”

“And they all do this, they all die very inconveniently, our parents. They die very thoughtlessly before you've had the chance to say, ‘Come on, what was going on? You know, did you and dad have an affair? What was happening?’ I would have done and she would have told me.”

5. Which writer does he wish he'd learnt an early lesson from?

Philip regrets being shy with girls as a teenager and Kirsty asks him what advice he would go back and give himself. “There were lots of girls that I was in love with from a distance,” remembers Philip. “But I never got close enough to, or had the nerve to tell them so. I think I'd have learned from some of the books I've read, including Trollope.”

Philip is referring to the Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope who is best known for the series of novels collectively known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire, set in the imaginary county of Barsetshire. [The similarity of this name with Borsetshire, the equally made up name of the county where The Archers is set, has led some to speculate that Trollope is the original inspiration for the long-running Radio 4 drama.]

“Now, Trollope is very good on human nature and the way we behave in societies and families and so on. He's terrific,” says Philip.

“And I’d have said,” says Philip of what he would have told his younger self, “‘Look, just go and tell her. Tell her you think she's lovely. Ask her to come out with you. What harm will come if she says no?’ I wish I'd known that.”