Philip Pullman: "The world is so full of stories"

Philip Pullman joined the Edinburgh International Book Festival 2018 to talk about his life's work, writing, and the importance of stories for all ages.

Feature by Mika Cook | 13 Aug 2018

It has taken ten years to bring Philip Pullman to the Edinburgh International Book Festival, says Young People’s Programme Director Janet Smith, whose excitement is as palpable as the hundreds crammed in to witness the master storyteller at work.

Joined by Val McDermid, it’s less a chair-panellist dynamic, but two writers musing about the process of excellent storytelling. McDermid gets straight to the point – she wants to explore the genesis of Pullman’s storytelling capabilities. “Poetry is communicated before it is understood,” he notes, recalling his favourite stories were by Rudyard Kipling because of this very language - he responded to their sound and rhythm from a young age, something he appreciates still. 

After graduation, he worked various jobs until becoming a secondary school teacher and it was here that Pullman first began to tell his stories. Convinced that the children should learn about the myths of Greece and Rome, he learned them by heart and told them in his classroom. Passion rings through as he speaks – stories are vital to a child’s education; he had considered creating the Nursery Rhyme Party until ill-health foiled those plans, a way to keep stories at the heart of children’s worlds.

“The world is so full of stories,” he says, with myths, fairytales and folktales rolling off the tongue. Children may forget Pythagoras’ theorem, he adds, recalling his classroom days, “but they will never forget the story that was told to them on that rainy Friday afternoon.”

His own stories have always started with a tiny apprehension, just something to prompt him into research. The difficulty never lies with starting to write, but around page 70, when it feels like the worst book ever, and you want to throw it away. “When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand” – do the unexpected, you might be surprised where it takes you. You can write without inspiration, he continues, but make it into a habit – habit is your friend. “Gin also helps,” he quips.

Finally, McDermid asks a question brewing in many people’s minds: why return to Lyra’s world? His answer is succinct: because he feels that he never really left it. After finishing His Dark Materials, he was asked to write Lyra’s Oxford, and later Once Upon a Time in the North, and all the while, another character had been nagging at him: Malcolm – and so that tiny apprehension to start La Belle Sauvage was born. 

Pullman knows how to bewitch an audience with his words, both on the written page and in person. Through his own reflections, his take on strong characters, the fight against boxing children’s books by age, and the vital nature of librarians, he keeps the audience in a trance-like state, proving himself well worth the decade-long wait, and befitting of the mantle of a storytelling master.


Edinburgh International Book Festival 2018 takes place until 27 Aug at Charlotte Square