Sir Philip Pullman

Philip Pullman was born on October 19, 1946, in Norwich, England. The son of an RAF pilot, he spent his childhood traveling across Southern Rhodesia and Australia before settling in North Wales. He read English at Exeter College, Oxford, and spent twelve years working as a middle school teacher while penning his earliest historical tales.

In 1995, Pullman published Northern Lights (released in North America as The Golden Compass), inaugurating His Dark Materials. Centered on the orphan Lyra Belacqua and her daemon Pantalaimon, the trilogy tackled profound metaphysical questions about consciousness, free will, organized religious dogma, and the necessity of experience over blind innocence.

In 2001, The Amber Spyglass made history as the first children's novel to win the prestigious Whitbread Book of the Year award. In 2005, Pullman was awarded the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, the world's richest prize in children's literature. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2019 for services to literature and continues his epic mythmaking with The Book of Dust series.