Enid Blyton has been named the United Kingdom’s best-loved writer, beating Harry Potter creator JK Rowling into third place and leaving literary giants such as Shakespeare, Jane Austen and Charles Dickens trailing. Blyton, creator of the Famous Five books as well as the Secret Seven, Malory Towers and Noddy, topped a poll of 2,000 adults for the 2008 Costa Book Awards.

There was an extremely strong showing for fantasy authors, with Roald Dahl, JRR Tolkien and Stephen King all making the top ten.

Philip Pullman, the author of the His Dark Materials trilogy, does not appear in the top 50. Other notable omissions include Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond series, the Winnie the Pooh author A A Milne, Iris Murdoch and the Bridget Jones’s Diary author Helen Fielding. The survey of 2,000 adults was commissioned by One Poll, the internet market research company, to mark the 2008 Costa Book Awards.

The United Kingdom’s top ten authors

1. Enid Blyton
2. Roald Dahl
3. JK Rowling
4. Jane Austen
5. William Shakespeare
6. Charles Dickens
7. JRR Tolkien
8. Agatha Christie
9. Stephen King
10. Beatrix Potter

Fantasy author Philip Pullman is certain that a sequel will be made to the controversial film The Golden Compass. He spoke out after film industry sources cast doubt on a film version of The Subtle Knife being given the go-ahead.

The Golden Compass was the sixth most successful film at the UK box office last year, grossing £26m, but it took only £35m in the United States, due to a boycott by some Christians.

Mr Pullman said he hoped there would not be too long an interval before work begins on the sequel because Dakota Blue Richards, the 12-year-old star of The Golden Compass, was growing up quite quickly. He added that making a movie was a very different, and far more costly process to writing a book and having it published.

When The Golden Compass was released last year, New Line Cinema had high hopes for the trilogy as the new The Lord of the Rings, and the sequel was due to be released by the end of 2009. Since The Golden Compass was released, New Line has merged with Warner Brothers.

Source: Oxford Mail

Philip Pullman biography and book reviews

Terry Goodkind’s Wizard’s First Rule (unabridged) has stormed to the top of the fantasy charts at Audible.co.uk

1. Wizard’s First Rule by Terry Goodkind
2. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
3. The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
4. The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman
5. The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman
6. Northern Lights by Philip Pullman
7. Outcast by Michelle Paver
8. Prince Caspian by CS Lewis
9. Stone of Tears by Terry Goodkind
10. Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett

All the top ten are unabridged readings.

When The Golden Compass was adapted into a movie last year, English fantasy author Philip Pullman had high hopes that the other two novels in his trilogy, His Dark Materials, would follow suit. However, Philip Pullman has suggested that accusations from religious groups that The Golden Compass was anti-Catholic may have dented the film’s box office.

Warner Brothers had been banking on The Golden Compass emulating the success of the Narnia Chronicles and The Lord of the Rings, but while the movie was successful in Europe, making $300m, it made only $70m in the US, which the studio put down to parental boycotting of the movie.

The author now feels that it is unlikely that His Dark Materials will be completed as a trilogy of films due to the under performance of the Golden Compass in the US. However, The Subtle Knife has been given a release date in 2009 and there have been reports that New Line Cinema HAS begun work on a sequel.

The director of The Golden Compass, Chris Weitz, had expressed his intention to make sequels based upon the remaining two novels but Philip Pullman informed British media last week that he had not yet been contacted about plans for a sequel.

Still, Pullman said he remained “hopeful” that The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass would be made into films, insisting that it is common for possible films to remain in limbo for some time before a final decision was made.

Philip Pullman biography, bibliography, book reviews and interviews
Northern Lights book review

JK Rowling, the author of the hugely successful Harry Potter series has added her name to fellow fantasy author Philip Pullman’s campaign to check publishers’ plans to establish age guidance limits on books. Pullman, author of the His Dark Materials trilogy is at the vanguard of a group of authors and illustrators who are all angry about the guidelines. The new scheme would see children’s books stamped with age limits, in a similar way guidance ratings are given to movies. JK Rowling is the newest recruit to condemn the planned move, alongside children’s literature giants Quentin Blake, Anne Fine and Dame Jacqueline Wilson.

Pullman explains his choice to boycott the move: “You simply can’t decide who your readership will be. Nor do I want to, because declaring that it’s for any group in particular means excluding every other group.”

The UK’s biggest audio-book web site has a fantastic array of fantasy books from all the top authors. The top 10 for May 2008 shows that Philip Pullman and Terry Pratchett transfer extremely well to audio-book - Terry Goodkind’s Wizard’s First Rule is the Editor’s Pick. The links below lead to reviews on the titles (written word not audio-book). Click on the Audible.co.uk banner on the right to download these titles today.

1. Northern Lights (Unabridged) - Philip Pullman
2. The Subtle Knife (Unabridged) - Philip Pullman
3. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (Unabridged) - Susanna Clarke
4. The Amber Spyglass (Unabridged) - Philip Pullman
5. The Hobbit (Unabridged) - JRR Tolkien
6. Once Upon a Time in the North (Unabridged) - Philip Pullman
7. Wizard’s First Rule (Unabridged) - Terry Goodkind
8. Thief of Time (Unabridged) - Terry Pratchett
9. The Colour of Magic (Unabridged) - Terry Pratchett
10. Monstrous Regiment (Unabridged) - Terry Pratchett

Audiobook downloads - Visit audible.co.uk

Philip Pullman, winner of the Carnegie Medal and Guardian Award for his trilogy entitled His Dark Materials. Northern Lights is set in a parallel world alike to our own. It is the tale of a twelve-year-old called Lyra and her quest to rescue a friend and find her father, aided by her daemon, an armoured bear, and a witch-queen. Northern Lights is written and narrated with vigour and vitality by Philip Pullman and a full cast.

Audiobook downloads - Visit audible.co.uk

Philip Pullman was born on the 19th October, 1946 in Norwich, England. Pullman is best known for the series of books entitled His Dark Materials, the award winning children’s literature consisting of Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass.

Philip Pullman biography, bibliography, interviews and book reviews
Northern Lights book review

Philip Pullman, children’s laureate Michael Rosen, Michael Morpurgo and David Almond, over 80 authors, illustrators, librarians, teachers and booksellers will publish a statement in this Friday’s Bookseller opposing the initiative and disassociating themselves from age guidance.

The authors’ statement describes the proposal as "ill-conceived, damaging to the interests of young readers, and highly unlikely, despite the claims made by those publishers promoting the scheme, to make the slightest difference to sales". Pullman told The Bookseller: "Many writers felt as if we’d been presented with a fait accompli, and there was a certain amount of anger expressed. The question was what to do about it. We decided that the best way forward was simply to say publicly ‘Not in our name’."

The authors outline a number of reasons why age-ranging is harmful: it will discourage children from reading outside their age band; it is over-prescriptive; and it is unnecessary in that there are ample of clues on books as to their target age.

Pullman said: "We are not in a position to dictate anything and I wouldn’t want to tell publishers how to run their business, but if one of my books is published with an age range, I’m dissociating myself from it, it is nothing to do with me."

The judgment to commence with age guidance was taken in April 2008 by most of the publishers of children’s literature, including Hachette, Penguin, Random House, Scholastic and HarperCollins. The system will be implemented this autumn, starting it on black and white fiction and eventually rolling it out to all children’s categories. It will see a black and white design placed on the back of the books, near the bar code, with the categories of 5+, 7+, 9+, 11+ and 13+/teen.

Philip Pullman biography, bibliography, interviews and book reviews

Philip Pullman’s fantasy series His Dark Materials included animal daemons, representative of the owner’s souls. Professor Pamela Briggs and Dr Patrick Olivier have developed an idea where devices (called biometric daemons) can carry a person’s details and replace the need for pin numbers and passwords in everyday life – they would also react differently to levels of risk and eventually die if they are apart from their owner for too long a time period. Voice-recognition technology software that monitors the owner’s actions and movements could also be installed to allow the daemon to become more “intelligent”.

Dr Olivier believes that the idea could be ready within a couple of years "The idea of the daemon is that it is a living credit card," he said. "It would recognise it is with you, and if you put it in your pocket, it can recognise your walk and your voice."

Low-risk transactions would mean that the daemon would not need much "reassurance" to allow the deal to be completed. But if an unknown cash point was used, or if a purchase appeared out of the ordinary, it might require the owner to give a fingerprint before authorisation could be completed.

Philip Pullman, the best selling author of the fantasy trilogy, His Dark Materials, will be turning his talents to writing a new comic strip. The new strip, The Adventures of John Blake will appear weekly in a new manga-inspired comic, the DFC. Working together with illustrator John Aggs the strip will be distributed monthly by mail.

Pullman was a big reader of boys comics when he was a child “I was brought up on comics like the Eagle, Wizard and Beano, though not so much Dandy, this is what I want to bring back to today’s youngsters – good storytelling, but with more adventurous and original illustrations.”

Pullman will return to writing novels in 2009 with the children’s story The Book of Dust. He has not discounted a return to the graphic novel after completing the novel, saying "Yes, I might do a graphic novel myself after that".