Philip Pullman Events

I'm in receipt of Philip Pullman's monthly email newsletter (for which you can sign up here - click on the envelope) and this month Philip mentions he'll be giving the annual Richard Hillary Memorial Lecture (entitled this year: "POCO A POCO: The Fundamental Particles of Narrative") at Trinity College, Oxford. The lecture is given in memory of the heroic airman Richard Hillary, a Spitfire pilot, who died in the Second World War. The lecture isn't about war or flying; it's on a literary topic, and previous lecturers have included several novelists. I'm hoping I can make it to this one.

Philip's also speaking at the annual Oxford Literary Festival in March. He'll be doing three events, at one of which he is going to be talking with Adrian Hodges, the screenwriter who made the adaptation of The Ruby in the Smoke for BBC television (which I watched and briefly reviewed. The two will be talking about the difference between telling a story on the page and on the screen, and looking at some passages from the book to see how they worked in the adaptation. This event is one I really want to attend ! Another event at the Literary Festival will focus on the filming of The Golden Compass - but Philip says the format of that one is as yet undecided.

(Disappointingly, the Programme for this year's Festival isn't on the website yet.)