His seasoned materials

Key to author Philip Pullman's success are his long-standing friendships, his attachment to his Oxford surroundings, a love of stories - and a bit of carving, writes Maev Kennedy

Recently there have been significant developments in Philip Pullman's work. Not this week's starry film premieres, as The Golden Compass launches the movie trilogy of His Dark Materials. Not the next book, due out in April, nor the speech he gives on Milton next week at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, nor even the announcement that he is becoming an honorary professor at Bangor University, Wales.

No, the good news is that his rocking horse is making excellent progress. He has been working on it for years, and now the horse is finished and the stand is coming on splendidly. As he wrote recently, in a published diary in which writing seems the least of his absorbing passions, "As always when I use a sharp tool on well-seasoned wood, I wonder why I spend my life doing anything else".

That life changed forever in 1995 with a children's book - including a preface from Milton's Paradise Lost - that begins: "Lyra and her daemon moved through the darkening Hall . . ."

Pullman's editor of 25 years, David Fickling, says: "He is one of the greatest storytellers of all time, and he's right here among us, writing now. It's like having Thomas Hardy about to write Far From the Madding Crowd. It's just thrilling to be around."

Fickling remembers the genesis of the trilogy over a lunch of sausages and mash. "He said, 'I think I've got something big, David', and I thought, 'Brilliant, the bigger the better.' But I did ask: 'Is it a good story?' He said yes, and that was good enough for me."

A long list of books had already emerged from Pullman's garden writing shed in Oxford, but Northern Lights, the first of the 1,000-page His Dark Materials series, was instantly recognised as a classic.

Adults relished the darkness and complexity of its moral vision, and the richness of its imagined world. The hall where it opens is almost (but disturbingly not quite) like an Oxford college, with its high table and portraits of long-dead masters, give or take the odd shape-shifting daemon, and the pan-fried poppy ritually consumed by the dons. Younger people relished a cracking adventure, where resourceful children are the heroes and well-meaning, stupid or malevolent adults flicker in and out of the narrative.

It won the Guardian and Carnegie children's fiction prizes, went on to sell more than 14 million copies, and was recently voted the Carnegie of Carnegies. The stage version at the Royal National Theatre in London sold every seat for every show, and the first rapturous reviews suggest the films will repeat the trick.

But not everyone loves Pullman and his work. In Britain he is attacked by both the godly and the godless, by Christian groups as anti-religious and by the Secular Society for a sanitised film version. In the US, Christian groups have threatened to picket cinemas. Bill Donohue, the president of the US Catholic League, last week accused Pullman of "a stealth campaign", saying he allowed the studio to water down his "Catholic-bashing books" to ensure that the second and third films were made. He added: "An honest author would never allow a film studio to prostitute his work."

Pullman's deceptively mild response to the attacks is to say that he is "just a storyteller".

Pullman has moved with his editor from Oxford University Press through other publishing houses to Random House. His agent is still his university friend, Caradoc King. The invitation at Bangor came from the vice-chancellor, Prof Merfyn Jones, who also happens to be his friend from the next bench at Miss Enid Jones's English class at Ysgol Ardudwy in Harlech, north Wales.

"It was a great friendship based on shared intellectual interests," Jones said. "Neither of us was at all sporty, and we were both intensely interested in Milton and Donne and the metaphysical poets, perhaps slightly unusually for teenage boys. We had tremendous conversations, and great arguments."

Recently, his mother found a cache of his old schoolbooks, which turned out to be covered with notes and scraps of poetry in Pullman's hand.

Fickling says: "These very long- maintained friendships and working relationships are the mark of the man."

One group of friends is quite new. John Keyes, a landscape designer who lives on a canal boat in the heart of Jericho (a bohemian corner of Oxford now under siege by developers), began reading the trilogy and was surprised to recognise himself and his friends. The first kidnap, which launches the complex plot, is set in Jericho, and the boathouse residents are clearly contemporary Gyptians, Pullman's floating gypsies.

Asked for support to fight the development of a delightful backwater, Pullman responded at once, and not only wrote open letters and articles of support but appeared at fundraising events. He recently gave a reading at a protest outside the developers' office, though he declined to join the boat people in wearing shark costumes.

Keyes, who admits he is not much of a reader, tackled the books because he liked Pullman, and was gripped.

"I see a natural philosopher who, rather than becoming a professor within some learned institution, has chosen to express himself in books which are ostensibly for children," says Keyes. "He is very wise, and he also has a very dry, pointed sense of humour. He is not bitter, but he is very sharp."

"He is very able, and a good man. All his work is about delight," Fickling says. "He's not saying it's easy to be alive, but he is saying it's glorious."