‘Literary big bang’: Readers have waited 30 years for this finale

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Is this really the end for Lyra Belacqua? Thirty years after readers first encountered Philip Pullman’s scruffy, determined waif in Northern Lights, the first instalment of the His Dark Materials trilogy, the English author is letting her go.

The publication of The Rose Field – the third and final instalment of The Book of Dust, a second trilogy that extends the story of Lyra and her cosmic battle against a theocratic organisation known as the Magisterium – is billed as 79-year-old Pullman’s farewell to his now 20-something heroine.

If you haven’t read the books, seen the 2007 movie The Golden Compass starring Nicole Kidman, or binged the acclaimed TV adaptation of His Dark Materials, you’d be forgiven for thinking “so what?” But for the millions of readers who have been living in Lyra’s world (or rather, parallel worlds) since 1995, the arrival of The Rose Field is a literary big bang. Many of them were children when they read the first book; now they’re adults with children of their own.

Nicole Kidman as Mrs Coulter in the Golden Compass.

His Dark Materials and The Book of Dust have sold more than 49 million copies worldwide. Pullman insists he does not write for any particular audience, but the fact that his work was initially categorised as children’s fiction played to his advantage. He explains: “If His Dark Materials had been published as an adult book – which it could have been – it would have gone straight onto the shelves labelled ‘fantasy’. And that means no ordinary adult reader would have touched it. People know what they like and they won’t try anything different.”

Children, by contrast, are “literary omnivores”, he argues. As young readers devoured Pullman’s books, they asked their parents to join in so they could discuss the thorny questions about faith, authority and growing up raised by Lyra’s quest. A multi-generational publishing phenomenon was born.

Now that phenomenon is reaching its climax. Speaking from his home in Oxfordshire, a rambling house he shares with his wife, Judith Speller, and cockapoos Coco and Mixie, he admits he’s a little “frazzled” by all the attention. “But I enjoy it – it’s not something that I put up with grudgingly,” he says.

Is this really the end of his literary interest in Lyra? “Yes, I’m done with that story,” he says in the even, posh-adjacent voice of an Oxford-educated former middle school teacher. “It’s a nice world to be in and I know my way around. I can talk to people there, I have friends there and it’s a pleasant place to be. But Lyra’s story is done, it’s come to an end.”

Dafne Keen as Lyra in His Dark Materials.

But wait, there’s hope. The story of Lyra and her daemon Pan (every human character in the books is accompanied by a daemon, an animal-shaped manifestation of their soul or inner self) has run its course, but the author is finding it hard to sever ties with other key characters. For example, Will Parry, the boy whose nascent love affair with Lyra was cut short by the difficulties of navigating parallel worlds. “I’ve hinted that Will might become a doctor,” says Pullman. “I can just imagine how a doctor with a daemon would go about diagnosing a patient. He’d have insights that wouldn’t be available to an ordinary medical student.”

Pullman has also grown fond of Abdel Ionides, the merchant and guide, who is Lyra’s companion for much of The Rose Field. “I like him,” he says. “I want to see more of what he does.” I suggest to Pullman that he’s leaving the door open to more stories from – as the film studios like to say – The World of The Book of Dust. “Yeah,” he says, seemingly pleased by the idea.

Jane Tranter, Dafne Keen, Philip Pullman, Ruth Wilson and Jack Thorne attending the premiere of His Dark Materials in London.

For now, books about Will and Abdel will have to wait. Pullman has started work on a memoir called Before I Forget. Born in 1946, he is a child of the British Empire; an RAF pilot’s son who bounced around the globe, airbase to airbase. In 1954, his father was killed in a plane crash in Kenya. “I remember the telegram arriving and my mother crying,” he says. “All I knew about it was that he’d died fighting the Mau Mau [an insurgent group seeking Kenya’s independence from British rule]. I didn’t know what that meant.”

Alfred Outram Pullman was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC), allowing his young son to view him as a dashing hero. But in 2008, Philip learnt that his father had not died in combat, but in a training accident. His death remains mysterious.

Pullman’s mother married another RAF pilot – “he was one of my father’s friends, I liked him” – and the peripatetic lifestyle continued. He has clear memories of the 18 months he spent in Adelaide. “We lived in Glenelg for a while, which I liked because it was a palindrome,” he says. “I remember it was 1956 because Melbourne had the Olympics and we listened to it on the radio.”

Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall and author Philip Pullman (left) view a book with Dr Martin Kauffmann at the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford in 2022.

His love of storytelling was shaped by his grandfather, a Church of England rector who beguiled him with tales from the Bible. Later, an English teacher introduced him to Paradise Lost. He has described Milton’s epic poem about the fall of man as “enthralling”. As a young man, he retained his love of liturgical poetry and prose, but developed an antipathy towards organised religion. His Dark Materials is a kind of literary inversion of Paradise Lost, in which original sin is transformed from mankind’s great mistake into something miraculous: a means of attaining consciousness and all that comes with it.

In Pullman’s books, consciousness is represented by a mysterious particle called Dust. It is attracted to all sentient beings, particularly after puberty, and is connected to fundamental senses such as curiosity and love. Lyra seeks to understand it; the Magisterium, which views Dust as a manifestation of original sin, tries to demonise it. Pullman has said one his aims in The Rose Field is to provide a fuller explanation of the nature of Dust and its relationship to consciousness. If that sounds a bit complicated, well, it is.

‘I’ve always felt that what is derogatorily called political correctness is just another term for being polite.’

“Matter is an extraordinary thing – much stranger than we think,” says Pullman. “My head is made entirely of matter; you can cut it apart and drill holes in it, but you’ll find nothing but matter. You won’t find a soul or a wispy thing that flies out the window when you die. Yet I’m conscious; I’m conscious of this glass of water in my hand. Where does this consciousness come from?”

Erm, where?

“Well, one answer that I’m intrigued by and want to think more about, is the idea of panpsychism – the idea that everything is conscious. It’s the idea that the fundamental particles of matter have a nature that is conscious. There’s consciousness everywhere – it’s like a field that goes through the whole universe. Dust is our perception, our imagination looking at the Rose Field.”

Philip Pullman attends An Evening With Philip Pullman to celebrate 30 years of Northern Lights this year.

“Yeah, it isn’t easy,” he says, sensing my abject confusion. “It’s a philosophical issue – what is consciousness, how do we become conscious and what does it mean? I feel I might not have explained it [in The Rose Field] as fully as needed. But then Lyra and Pan are still working it out. Scientists and philosophers don’t stop talking just because they’ve made a discovery.”

The depth of Pullman’s fascination with science and philosophy is matched by his distaste for religious institutions. He was once quoted as saying “my books are about killing God”. Such bold pronouncements saw him labelled “the most dangerous author in Britain” by a right-leaning British columnist.

I ask him if, in these polarised, intolerant times, he ever feels threatened by zealots offended by his views? He shrugs. “When I went to America for the premiere of The Golden Compass I was given a bodyguard,” he says. “A big, square guy called Gary. But I’ve never felt I’ve needed a bodyguard here [in the UK]. People say nasty things to you on Twitter or shout at you when you’re giving a talk. But no one has ever thrown anything at me or threatened my life.”

Remarkably, for a high-profile author unafraid to share his views on social media, he has mostly skirted controversy. The closest he came to it was in 2022 when he resigned as the president of the Society of Authors after publicly backing the British poet and writer Kate Clanchy, whose memoir Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me was accused of using “racial tropes”.

Pullman doesn’t blink when I mention the episode. “I thought she [Clanchy] was being unfairly criticised and came to her defence on Twitter,” he says. “I was roundly abused and I felt I should resign as president because there was a lot of stirring going on and they [the society] didn’t defend me in the way I felt they should.” He no longer uses Twitter (aka X), having defected to Bluesky.

The Clanchy incident has not made him more careful about speaking his mind, he insists. “I’ve always felt that what is derogatorily called political correctness is just another term for being polite. I have always tried to be polite and I have never felt vulnerable to the accusation of being rude, or thoughtless, or offensive. If you speak politely and treat people with courtesy you’re much less likely to upset them.”

The Rose Field: The Book of Dust Volume Three is out now via Penguin.

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