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The author of the His Dark Materials trilogy was a schoolteacher for 13 years, also writing plays, some of which became children’s books, such as Count Karlstein (1982), The Firework-Maker’s Daughter (1995) and the first of the Sally Lockhart novels, The Ruby in the Smoke (1986). Pullman’s trenchant views on the over-testing of children and the importance of “freedom for a true, imaginative and humane engagement with literature” has aroused almost as much controversy as his championing of anti-Christian themes in His Dark Materials. Inspired by Paradise Lost, they posit a world very like our own where souls are visible as animal “daemons” and witches, angels and bears rally to the side of a new Adam and Eve in a fight between free will and God. Powerful, passionate and superbly plotted, they are modern classics, as appealing to adults as to children.
One to read: Northern Lights (1996)
More about Philip Pullman
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We've trawled the brochures and websites to find this summer’s best holidays for every taste and budget

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