{"id":325754,"date":"2025-10-23T05:59:13","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T05:59:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/325754\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T05:59:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T05:59:13","slug":"philip-pullman-taught-me-english-at-school-and-he-was-fantastic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/325754\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Philip Pullman taught me English at school, and he was fantastic’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ethan GudgeSouth of England<\/p>\n

\"GettyGetty Images<\/p>\n

Sir Philip Pullman’s books have sold 49 million copies across the globe<\/p>\n

A former student of world-renowned fantasy novelist Sir Philip Pullman has said he was “fantastic and really engaging” teacher.<\/p>\n

The final book of Sir Philip’s hugely popular series about Lyra Silvertongue – the heroine of His Dark Materials and The Book of Dust trilogies – is published on Thursday.<\/p>\n

But years before his books had sold more than 49 million copies, the author taught English in his home city of Oxford, where the two trilogies are set.<\/p>\n

During the 1970s and 80s he worked at schools including Marston Middle School, where Mike O’Connor was one of his students.<\/p>\n

He said Sir Philip had been a “fantastic and really engaging” teacher, who was “just so creative”.<\/p>\n

“He used to write the school play every year, and I think that was sort of the early stages of his writing, albeit not necessarily the very beginning,” he said.<\/p>\n

Mr O’Connor said he had starred in one such production written by Sir Philip, where he played a villain in the Arabian Golden Age-set production.<\/p>\n

“The highlight was having to get a custard pie in the face – it was just loads of fun, really creative and a real stand out,” he said.<\/p>\n

But Sir Philip’s teaching was not all custard pies and creative writing.<\/p>\n

“He [Sir Philip] was strict,” Mr O’Connor said.<\/p>\n

“Once, when my best friends and I all got caught doing some sort of naughtiness, Mr Pullman gave us 500 lines each and we had to stay in at lunch break.<\/p>\n

“I’ll tell you now it doesn’t sound like a lot, but it took half the week and was pretty painful on the old arms.”<\/p>\n

\"GettyGetty Images<\/p>\n

Sir Philip spent his younger days teaching English at schools across Oxford<\/p>\n

He said Sir Philip had remembered him on the one he had seen him since his school days – which came when the author was being interviewed at Mr O’Connor’s former workplace, Radio Oxford.<\/p>\n

“I did bump into him once and I was quite pleased that he remembered me,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Oxford is that kind of place – I didn’t live in live in north Oxford but I went to school there and it seemed like half the people’s parents were writers or academics.<\/p>\n

“There were just famous people around all over the place.”<\/p>\n

The Rose Field, Sir Philip’s sixth and final book in his series about Lyra Silvertongue follows his heroine’s story up to her early 20s.<\/p>\n

The character was 11 when she was introduced in the best-selling and award-winning first His Dark Materials book, Northern Lights, in 1995.<\/p>\n

\"Philip<\/p>\n

The Rose Field, Sir Philip’s final book in his series about Lyra Silvertongue, is published on Thursday<\/p>\n

Mr O’Connor said one of his daughters had gone on to “love” the stories, even taking a trip from their home of London up to Oxford Botanic Garden to see Lyra’s Bench, a significant location in the books.<\/p>\n

He said his daughter had once been divided into groups during school English lessons that were named after famous authors – including JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis and Pullman.<\/p>\n

“When my daughter came home and told me, I said one of those was my teacher and she said: ‘What!’.”<\/p>\n

“You don’t always remember all of your teachers from childhood, but even if Mr Pullman hadn’t become a famous author, we’d all still remember him really fondly,” he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ethan GudgeSouth of England Getty Images Sir Philip Pullman’s books have sold 49 million copies across the globe…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":325755,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[1022,171,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-325754","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115421955586804930","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325754\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}