Inside His Dark Materials: The World Of Philip Pullman

With its far-flung adventures and unexpected tragedy, Philip Pullman's childhood is the stuff of storybooks. Born in Norwich in 1946, the man who went on to become a celebrated author grew up in Rhodesia. He was seven when his fighter pilot dad died in a crash. This, naturally enough, had a profound effect. For one thing, it primed Pullman to write fantasy and children's stories. As he says, kids' books need to dispense with parents in one way or another - only then can the story's children be left to explore caves, capture crooks and drink lashings of ginger beer.

After his dad's death, Pullman's mother remarried a good friend of her dead husband's (whereupon "Uncle Johnny" became "dad") and relocated the family to Australia, and then to Wales, where the lad grew to love the verdant landscape and Milton's Paradise Lost. On these subjects and more, Pullman is a revealing, articulate interviewee.

What lets this reverential doco down are its basic production values, including various cheesy montages. Discussion of Pullman's peripatetic childhood, for instance, is overlaid with melodramatic music and hackneyed shots of old trains. And the narration, written by Pullman's pal Nick Tucker, is sometimes laboured. Worst of all, there's too much assumed knowledge about the author, whose credits include the His Dark Materials trilogy and The Golden Compass.

If you're unfamiliar with his work, this isn't a great place to start. One for the fans.