Philip Pullman

Award-winning novelist Philip Pullman is interviewed by Christina Patterson in The Independent ahead of publication of his new book, The Scarecrow and His Servant.

Contrary to his image as some kind of genius who sprang into the literary landscape from nowhere, he has been writing all his life. Northern Lights was just the culmination of an extraordinary range of storytelling skills that he had been honing in a variety of contexts for years: in his work as a teacher, where he would read the children fairy tales and write plays for them to perform, and in a range of books for younger readers.