Sir Philip Pullman in conversation with Professor Kristen Poole

Everything has a meaning, if only we could read it — Philip Pullman

We finish with a flourish!

Join us for the final event of the festival where Sir Philip will be discussing signs, symbols… and secrets together with Professor Kristen Poole.

Philip Pullman was born in Norwich, but has lived most of his life in Oxford, having failed to leave the city since he studied here as an undergraduate. He read English Language and Literature at Exeter College, and had a very good time, but didn’t work very hard, or maybe did the wrong sort of work. He spent a few years school teaching, but is probably best known for his novels, including the series ‘His Dark Materials’ and ‘The Book of Dust’. [from the author himself]

Professor Kristen Poole holds an endowed chair in English Renaissance literature at the University of Delaware (USA), and was recently a Visiting Fellow at Exeter College, Oxford. Her most recent book is Philip Pullman and the Historical imagination: Seventeenth-Century Literature, Science, and Religion in His Dark Materials and The Book of Dust (Oxford University Press, 2025).