(Lire en français)

     From 2005 to 2007, Philip Pullman wrote regularly to his readers on his website to discuss the books he was writing, the stageplay from the National Theater, the Golden Compass movie, or any topic of interest to him at a time when social networks were hardly existing. For non-English readers, Cittàgazze translated back in these days Sir Pullman's letters.
     Here you can access - again - to the original content of these letters...
     Enjoy!

April message

  Hello again. The first thing I need to do is correct a date I mentioned last time. My appearance at the Oxford Literary Festival, to talk about 'The Scarecrow and His Servant', is on Wednesday 13 April and not Tuesday 12. It's at 2pm in the Holywell Music Room, which is the oldest purpose-built concert hall in Britain, apparently. But I shall not be singing.

  A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to visit the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Didcot in Oxfordshire and be shown the work they're doing in the attempt to detect dark matter, which was the very work that Mary Malone was doing when she was so surprisingly interrupted. Dr Nigel Smith of the Particle Physics department and his colleagues Tim Durkin and Roland Luscher gave me a vivid and brilliant tour of the field, beginning with an account of how we know that the universe contains much more matter than we can see, and continuing with a description of the way they're trying to detect the particles that make it up.

  They've built a laboratory deep under a salt mine in Yorkshire, where they're going to install the latest detector. They need to go a long way underground in order to shield the experiment from any stray radiation on the surface. I didn't realise that there's still a lot of contamination from the above-ground nuclear weapon tests that were carried out forty or more years ago, and the only way to avoid getting a reaction from the wrong sort of particle is to use the earth itself as a shield.

  Once they're underground, they'll put together the detector itself, at the heart of which is a large flask of xenon gas kept at a very low temperature. This is surrounded by instruments that will see and record every 'event' - every time a particle of the sort they're looking for interacts with a xenon atom. The engineering is spectacular. The joint between the two halves of the stainless steel container, for example, needs to be completely airtight, and the best way of ensuring this is to put a very thin ring of 24 carat gold between them, which is soft enough to be compressed as they're tightened and to fill every minute and invisible crevice that could possibly exist.

  The sense of real and important work, at the very edge of what we know about the universe, was thrilling. Something that not even Mary Malone knew about, something there's even more of than dark matter, is the utterly baffling thing called dark energy, which has to exist for the galaxies and stars to behave in the way they do. So there's a great deal more to discover; we're nowhere near the end of mystery.

  What I don't suppose they'll come across is the entity I call Dust. But who knows? If anyone's going to discover it, I can't imagine anywhere better equipped with the technology, or better staffed with the minds and the understanding needed to grasp its implications.

  And as for 'The Book of Dust', it's under way.

  This year, my publisher has reminded me, is the tenth anniversary of the first publication of 'Northern Lights' or 'The Golden Compass'. Scholastic, my UK publishers, are going to bring out a new edition of the three books in 'His Dark Materials', and to mark the occasion I'm going to do some chapter-heading pictures for 'The Amber Spyglass'. You might remember that instead of the pictures at the opening of each chapter in that book, there are quotations that pay tribute to some of the inspiration behind the story. But I have always wanted to do pictures for it, to match the first two books, so pictures there will be.

  On Saturday 2 April I went to the National Theatre for the final performance of Nicholas Wright's stage adaptation of HDM. It was a sad occasion in one way, because it was the very last time we shall ever see that production and that cast; but it was triumphant in another, and the cast and crew got a standing ovation, which they richly deserved. They have performed the plays over 300 times; I have no idea how many people have seen it, but whenever I went, the theatre was full; and everything about it, from the programme to the music to the amazing staging to the dæmon-puppets to the brilliant cast, was superb. It's invidious to pick out any of the cast as being special - but I shall anyway, if only to thank Anna Maxwell Martin and Dominic Cooper, from the first run, and Elaine Symons and Michael Legge from the second, for incarnating Lyra and Will so movingly. I ought to go on and thank everyone else, because there wasn't a weak link.

  But what I will do is mention www.stagework.org.uk - a very interesting and cleverly designed website about the work of the National Theatre, where you can find a great deal of detail about the production of HDM. There's a fascinating new section, too, in which you can see Elaine and Michael as Lyra and Will being rehearsed in one important scene, and playing it several different ways, so you can pick out your favourite interpretations of each moment and then edit them together like a film.

  And now we're into politics. The Prime Minister has called a general election for 5 May, so all the business that Parliament was going to discuss has been abandoned for the time being - including the bill to prevent incitement to religious hatred. As far as I can see, the motive for this proposed law was largely political: it was intended to boost Muslim support in constituencies where Muslims have traditionally supported Labour, but where the Iraq war has had a damaging effect on the Muslim vote. I'll give the government credit for some good intentions too; they may have genuinely believed that it would prevent obnoxious individuals and parties such as the BNP from stirring up racial hatred under the thin pretence of criticising people's religion. Actually, it would not have done that; it would merely have made it possible for anyone who didn't like the religious (or anti-religious) tone of a book or a play, for example, to go to law to have it banned.

  But it was badly thought out. The Prime Minister said that it wouldn't have any damaging effect on freedom of speech, because whether an wouldn't be up to individuals who felt affronted by criticism of their religion, but up to the Crown Prosecution Service, and in most cases they wouldn't prosecute. After all, what's more likely to inflame the anger of the zealots than (a) inviting them to feel aggrieved by inventing an offence that didn't exist before, and then (b) denying them the satisfaction they were promised through the courts?

  Anyway, there was a great deal of opposition to the bill, and it's now had to be shelved till after the election. If this government is returned, they might think more carefully before bringing it back - or they might not, in which case they'll find a large number of cogent arguments massed against them.

  But I'm not going to talk politics here unless they have an impact on my work.

  Enough for now. Enjoy the spring!