Philip Pullman

Sir Philip Nicholas Outram Pullman is an English writer. His books include the fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials and The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, a fictionalized biography of Jesus. In 2008, The Times named Pullman one of the "50 greatest British writers since 1945". In a 2004 BBC poll, he was named the eleventh most influential person in British culture. He was knighted in the 2019 New Year Honours for services to literature.

Northern Lights, the first volume in His Dark Materials, won the 1995 Carnegie Medal of the Library Association as the year's outstanding English-language children's book. For the 70th anniversary, it was named in the top ten by a panel composing the public election for an all-time favorite. It won the public vote from the shortlist and was named the all-time "Carnegie of Carnegies" in June 2007. It was filmed under the book's US title, The Golden Compass. In 2003, His Dark Materials trilogy ranked third in the BBC's The Big Read, a poll of 200 top novels voted by the British public.

In his early years, Pullman attended Taverham Hall School and Eaton House. From 1957, he was educated at Ysgol Ardudwy in Harlech, Gwynedd, spending time in Norfolk with his grandfather, a clergyman. Around that time, Pullman discovered John Milton's Paradise Lost, which would become a major influence for His Dark Materials.

From 1965, Pullman attended Exeter College, Oxford, receiving a Third-class BA in 1968. In an interview with the Oxford Student, he noted that he "did not really enjoy the English course" and that "I thought I was doing quite well until I came out with my third class degree and then I realized that I wasn't – it was the year they stopped giving fourth class degrees otherwise I'd have got one of those." He discovered William Blake's illustrations around 1970, which would also influence him greatly.

Pullman married Judith Speller in 1970, and they have two sons. At the time of his marriage, he began teaching children aged 9 to 13 at Bishop Kirk Middle School in Summertown, North Oxford, as well as writing school plays.

His first published work was The Haunted Storm, which was joint-winner of the New English Library's Young Writer's Award in 1972, but which he refuses to discuss. Galatea, an adult fantasy-fiction novel, followed in 1978, but it was his school plays that inspired his first children's book, Count Karlstein, in 1982. He stopped teaching shortly after the publication of his second children's book, The Ruby in the Smoke (1986), which has a Victorian setting.

Between 1988 and 1996, Pullman taught part-time at Westminster College, Oxford, continuing to write children's stories. He began His Dark Materials in about 1993. The first book, Northern Lights, was published in 1995 (entitled The Golden Compass in the U.S., 1996). Pullman won both the annual Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, a similar award that authors may not win twice.

Pullman has been writing full-time since 1996. He continues to deliver talks and occasionally writes for The Guardian, including writing and lecturing about education, in which he is often critical of unimaginative education policies. He was awarded a CBE in the New Year's Honours list in 2004. He also co-judged the Christopher Tower Poetry Prize (awarded by Oxford University) in 2005 with Gillian Clarke. In 2004, he was elected President of the Blake Society. In 2004, Pullman also guest-edited The Mays Anthology, a collection of new writing from students at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge.