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- [00:00]
Tabby
K Pop Demon Hunters Saja Boy's Breakfast
- [00:02]
Dominic Sambrook
Meal and Hunt Trick's Meal have just dropped at McDonald's. They're calling this a battle for the fans. What do you say to that, Rumi?
- [00:09]
Tabby
It's not a battle. So glad the Saja Boys could take breakfast and give our meal the rest of the day.
- [00:14]
Dominic Sambrook
It is an honor to share. No, it's our honor. It is our larger honor.
- [00:20]
Tabby
No, really, stop. You can really feel the respect in this battle. Pick a meal to pick a side
- [00:27]
Dominic Sambrook
Ba da ba ba ba and participate in McDonald's while supplies last. Lyra and her demon moved through the darkening hall, taking care to keep to one side, out of sight of the kitchen. The three great tables that ran the length of the hall were laid already, the silver and the glass catching what little light there was, and the long benches were pulled out, ready for the guests. Lyra stopped beside the master's chair and flicked the biggest glass gently with a fingernail. The sound rang clearly through the hall.
- [01:08]
Tabby
You're not taking this seriously, whispered her demon. Behave yourself.
- [01:13]
Dominic Sambrook
Her demon's name was Pantalyman, and he was currently in the form of a moth, a dark brown one, so as not to show up in the darkness of the hall. Crouching behind the high table, Lyra darted along and through the door into the Retiring Room, where she stood up and looked around. She'd lived most of her life in the college but had never seen the Retiring Room before. Only scholars and their guests were allowed in here, and never females. Even the maidservants didn't clean in here. That was the butler's job alone. Pantalimon settled on her shoulder.
- [01:45]
Tabby
Happy now? Can we go?
- [01:47]
Dominic Sambrook
He whispered.
- [01:49]
Tabby
Don't be silly. I want to look around. What do you think they talk about?
- [01:54]
Dominic Sambrook
Lyra said, or began to say in her Cockney accent, because before she'd finished the question, she heard voices outside the
- [02:05]
Tabby
door behind the chair.
- [02:06]
Dominic Sambrook
Quick, whispered Pantalyman, and in a flash Lyra was out of the armchair and crouching behind it. It wasn't the best one for hiding behind she'd chosen one in the very center of the room, and unless she kept very quiet, the door opened. So hello everybody. That was the 26th take of the opening of Philip Pullman's Northern Lights. Or as American listeners, if we have any American listeners, you will know it as the Golden Compass. So it's the first book in the Dark Materials trilogy. His Dark Materials. It won the Carnegie Medal. It's the best Children's Book of 1995. Paving the way for lots of other rewards that Philip Pullman won for the other books. He then did another trilogy, the last of which, the Rose Field, came out just before Christmas. And of course, Northern Lights has twice been adapted for the screen. There was a film, big Hollywood film, with Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman in 2007, and there was a big budget BBC series in 2019. Now, those films had perhaps slightly inferior acting performances to Tabby's performance. Absolutely, they did in that introduction. So it's an exciting book. It's a children's book. It's a thrilling adventure story. It's one of the most popular books published in Britain, Northern Lights, in the last 30 years or so. It's got fantastical creatures, it's got parallel worlds, it's got talking animals. For a child reader, I think in particular, it's a really, really gripping mystery story. We're following the protagonist, Lyra, as she goes to try and find her missing friend in the distant north. But. But also on why it merits its place in this show is it is a book about so much more. It's a book about evil and good. It's a book about growing up. It's a book about, in particular, God. The existence of God or the non existence of God.
- [04:02]
Tabby
Yeah.
- [04:02]
Dominic Sambrook
And about the tyranny exerted by authoritarian institutions and organizations. It's about dogma and free will and all of these kinds of things. So there's a lot going on. And as the titles, the various titles suggest, His Dark Materials or the Golden Compass, there are references to people like John Milton and William Blake and so on. So there's loads to talk about, isn't there, Tabby?
- [04:24]
Tabby
Yeah, absolutely there is. Because the three books put together, they are much more than a fantastical children's adventure, which they are also. But together, the three books, the Northern Lights, the Subtle Knife and the Amps by Glass, they kind of mirror human development through Lyra from childhood to womanhood. And the reader tends to be growing up with the books as they read them. So you start to understand the kind of the deep heart of these books. You know, it's all about the loss of innocence that is entailed in the transition from childhood to adulthood. And, you know, as the book's themes get darker and darker and Lyra is forced to confront kind of the mysteries of the universe, the complexities of love, both filial and romantic, kind of their maturity, their maturity deepens as well.
- [05:09]
Dominic Sambrook
So Northern Lights is the sort of. It's the most accessible, I guess, the lightest of them. The most obvious in adventure story of
- [05:17]
Tabby
the three books, definitely. It's most obviously kind of a children's book because we see Lyra's world and the forces of evil that she's battling kind of through the eyes of a 12 year old. Her eyes. And the narrative kind of retains this childlike excitement and this naivety. And to her it's kind of a thrilling adventure. She's on a quest to find a missing friend, but the existential questions at the heart of it and the kind of philosophical debates raging in her world around her, they gradually creep into, into her consciousness and into the narrative and so the reader's consciousness as well. And the process is set in motion in this book, Northern Lights, mainly towards the end of it, because Lyra makes a shocking discovery. She discovers who her parents are and she commits a terrible act of betrayal that will see someone very dear to her murdered. And we will be revealing these questions and mysteries after the break.
- [06:09]
Dominic Sambrook
So there'll be some spoilers. There are always spoilers on this show.
- [06:12]
Tabby
Not in the first half, but in the second half.
- [06:13]
Dominic Sambrook
We do like to spoil people's fun, but.
- [06:15]
Tabby
Dominic, what did you make of it? Cause I know, I know that you, you were slightly more skeptical of Northern Lights than perhaps I was.
- [06:22]
Dominic Sambrook
Do you know what? I wouldn't say I was skeptical. I'm a tiny bit, maybe Philip, a bit of a Philip Pullman skeptic, but that's not the same as being a. His dark material skeptic. So I was obviously an adult when I read this book. It came out at a time when there were two series really, that had caught the national imagination. Someone was Harry Potter and the other was His Dark Materials. And of course they were, they were kind of published at the same time, the late 1990s, early 2000s. And the standard thing I think, for people to say, sort of literati people, was, you know, all the attention is monopolized by Harry Potter, but his Dark Materials, that, that trilogy is so much deeper and darker and, you know, more worthy of adult scrutiny and all this kind of thing. And I ended up reading it partly because the BBC had a big thing called the. The Big Read where people voted on their favorite books. And this was one of the contenders. This series was one of the contenders. And I, I saw the BBC did a little document and I was fascinated by, you know, the talk of Milton and Blake and this idea about dust, which we'll come to and sin and all of this kind of thing. And actually when I read it, I really enjoyed it. I Enjoyed this one much more than the others in the trilogy because I think it wears that Philip Pullman has a tendency to be a little bit didactic and to be a bit excessively polemical. And I felt that this one was lighter and that the adventure story, I have to say I thought it when I first read it and I still think it now. I think the adventure story is brilliantly done. I think it's extremely imaginative and I think if I had read this, I think when I was 12, I would have loved it. What about you, Tabby? You probably did read it when you were 12, did you?
- [07:58]
Tabby
I did. I read it when I was about 10 or 11, I think. And I would say that it was the formative book of my childhood, my favorite book for years. I actually cried when I finished the trilogy. I mean, in part just because I was heartbroken that it was all over and I could never read them for the first time again. And Northern Lights, specifically the idea of demons as well especially, I think it kind of fundamentally reshaped my inner world and my imagination. I remember when I was little I would kind of spend hours or days like living with pretending that I had a demon on my shoulder or whatever it was and that could exist in my world, but only I could see it, that kind of thing.
- [08:37]
Dominic Sambrook
Oh, that's nice.
- [08:39]
Tabby
Yeah. But obviously the first time I read It As a 10 or 11 year old, I just thought it was a fantastic page turning adventure story. And so it remains. But then as I got older, particularly reading the second book and the third, it came across as something far deeper and more powerful. Exactly what kind of. I suppose you were talking about earlier when people say that it's worthy of adult scrutiny. I definitely found it to be. And I never found that the kind of polemic element of it got in the way of the story.
- [09:10]
Dominic Sambrook
Just a quick thing before we move on because we'll talk about Philip Pullman and we'll talk about his influences and we'll also talk about obviously the characters and the, the kind of narrative devices of the book. Just a quick question. I know you're a massive Harry Potter and a Tolkien fan.
- [09:22]
Tabby
I am.
- [09:22]
Dominic Sambrook
When you were growing up as well. And still are.
- [09:24]
Tabby
Yeah.
- [09:25]
Dominic Sambrook
How would you rank this compared with them? Because I know how much you love them. You still think this is the number one for you? The most formative?
- [09:31]
Tabby
Yeah, I think, I think definitely the most formative. In terms of nostalgia, it's gotta be Harry Potter in terms of like the world that I want to escape into and distract Myself with it's har. In terms of kind of just pure sort of love, like a love for the writer and a love for the world. And, you know, the world I would draw maps of and stuff, it would be Middle Earth, but this is the one that emotionally, I think had the biggest hold on me.
- [09:57]
Dominic Sambrook
Well, that's a lot of that is because of. Because of Lyra. Right. Because Lyra is such a. She's a character that I would imagine female readers in particular empathize with. And then she has her first love and all of that kind of thing, her experience of maturity, all of that.
- [10:10]
Tabby
I was growing up with Lyra as I was reading it. And as you say that, that first love thing is big, the demon thing is big. I was a child that liked history and it was set in this kind of world that was sort of Edwardian and I liked that. So it played into all the right things for me as a 10 or 11 year old girl.
- [10:27]
Dominic Sambrook
As I said, I'm a slightly Pullman skeptic in some ways, but I don't have a massive animus against him. Philip Pullman was born in Norwich in 1946. His father was in the Royal Air Force and died in a plane crash in Kenya when he was 7. He lived in Zimbabwe for a time, I think. Like you, Tabby.
- [10:44]
Tabby
Yeah, like me.
- [10:45]
Dominic Sambrook
He lived in Australia, which you didn't.
- [10:47]
Tabby
No.
- [10:47]
Dominic Sambrook
And he ended up settling in North Wales. So perhaps no offence to our Welsh listeners, but a slightly unglamorous choice after those initial forays into the exotic. So he's a massive reader. He read loads of poetry when he was at school and stuff. And he went to Oxford, Exeter College and did English, graduated in 1968. He became a teacher in Oxford. He taught Victorian literature. He was really interested in folk tales and things. And he. All this time in the 70s, 80s, he was writing children's books, Philip Pullman, and the big hit for him was the Sally Lockhart Quartet. So that's the 1980s. That's like the Ruby and the Smoke and things like that. There was a TV version with Billy Piper. And then the moment when he really became a sort of national figure was when he first published Northern lights, which is 1995, I think, and then the rest of the. His Dark Materials trilogy. And I think the difference between him and, let's say, J.K. rowling. J.K. rowling, of course, is somebody who's been drawn into lots of controversies more recently.
- [11:49]
Tabby
Yeah.
- [11:49]
Dominic Sambrook
But while she was publishing Harry Potter, she was not a controversial figure at all. She was a kind of media darling. Now, Philip Pullman was controversial and it was all about the issue of religion. So this runs right through the His Dark Materials trilogy, the treatments of religion. And he really lent into that when he was publishing them. So in 2002, he was asked if he was. If his books were anti Christian or anti God. And he told the Daily Telegraph, if there is a God and he is as the Christians describe him, then he deserves to be put down and rebelled against. As you look back over the history of the Christian church, it's a record of terrible infamy and cruelty and persecution and tyranny. And of course, this shows up in various ways in the books and particularly in America, more kind of traditionalist, sort of evangelical or hardline. Catholic groups in particular were not happy at all, were they?
- [12:46]
Tabby
No. So. So the Catholic League, among other religious groups, actually labeled the series Atheism for Kids. And it's. It's often appeared on the American Literary Association's list of most challenged books, ranking as high as second, I think, in 2008. It's been banned by school boards, particularly in places like Canada, for some reason.
- [13:06]
Dominic Sambrook
Wow.
- [13:06]
Tabby
And it's also, historically, the books have been removed from. From libraries because of parental complaints, because of the anti church rhetoric of them. And then the 2007 movie with Nicole Kidman that was both heavily criticized for watering down the Chris, you know, the anti Christianity, the anti Christian message of the books. But then also it was boycotted by religious groups who feared that it would lead children to read the more offensive books. So, I mean, you can't really win. And then, of course, famously the kind of English polemicist writer, journalist Peter Hitchens, he described Philip Pullman as the most dangerous author in Britain. I mean, he later renounced this statement. But what do you make of that, Dominic?
- [13:50]
Dominic Sambrook
So much of this is the idea that Philip Pullman is an overtly atheist figure who hates the church and who hates God and all of this kind of thing, which is obviously, I think, wrong. Wrong. I think sometimes he's courted this in his interviews. But Philip Pullman's books are absolutely stamped with religiosity. So his grandfather was a Church of England vicar. He obviously grew up steeped in this world. The Bible and indeed sort of Christian imagery run through his books. He's actually gone out of his way to say he's not an atheist, but an agnostic. I guess the one thing you've sort of alluded several times to, oh, Dominic's gonna be very hard on Philip Pullman. Or whatever.
- [14:28]
Tabby
I would have just suspected that you found him a bit tireso, them objecting to his views. I think you just don't like someone that makes a point about anything. About anything. Yeah, you just don't like people have opinions.
- [14:39]
Dominic Sambrook
Yeah, you're not wrong. No, actually, I tell you what it is. It's that I really like the Chronicles of Narnia. And Philip Pullman loathes the Chronicles of Narnia. He's described them as ugly, poisonous, vile, life hating, nauseating, drivel, loathsome, disgusting, and containing a view of life so hideous and cruel, I can scarcely contain myself when I think of it. And, Tabby, I know that you like the Chronicles of Narnia too, and I think this is just massively over the top. And I think, you know, he's elevated CS Lewis into his great hate figure. I mean, in many ways, you could argue CS Lewis is the real antagonist of his da materials, that they're basically a massive attack on Lewis and Lewis's fantasy vision, you know, because obviously the Chronicles of Narnia are overtly Christian, not that most children even recognize it. I do find that a little bit tiresome. However, separating the author's interviews from the book is really important.
- [15:30]
Tabby
Yeah, I think that's true of all art forms, actually.
- [15:33]
Dominic Sambrook
Of course, it doesn't diminish the book at all. So on the book, he got the idea, as we will discuss, from William Blake, John Milton, his interest in science as well. So quantum theory and stuff. There's a lot of that in there, isn't there?
- [15:45]
Tabby
Yeah, he was really into kind of the idea of dark matter. So this is kind of this invisible form of matter. It makes up 85% of the universe. But no one really knows what it is because it's not made up of atoms. So it's kind of inexplicable. So he was fascinated by that, and he was fascinated by quantum theory. And this is the idea of multiple worlds. And so these concepts put together with his great heroes, John Milton and William Blake, he had this strange world living in his head, but he couldn't quite create a narrative out of it. And then it clicked for him. And I love this point because it reminds me of how Tolkien had kind of this world, this. This mythology in his head, Middle Earth. And then it kind of became a story when he was. Was sitting there marking exam papers, and it was the whole Hobbit living in a hole under the ground. For Philip Pullman, the Great Connector, the thing that kind of unlocked the story for him was Demons. And I think these are ingenious. I think they're his greatest invention. And these are animal manifestations of the human soul. We allude. You know, the opening reading introduces them. Lyra has a demon called Pantalymon. And one day he was walking around his garden, and he suddenly realized that children's demons, he'd had this idea of demons, they change, but adults, demons don't. And so he realized that this world and this. This kind of story that had been floating around his mind, it was all going to be about growing up. And after that, he started writing it in 1993.
- [17:05]
Dominic Sambrook
So on the demons I saw in an interview, he said one of the inspirations was sort of Renaissance and whatnot, artworks in which there would be, you know, Leonardo or Tiepolo or Holbein. They would have these portraits where there would be particularly a young woman or a woman, a lady, kind of with an animal.
- [17:25]
Tabby
So the lady with the ermine.
- [17:27]
Dominic Sambrook
With the ermine, exactly.
- [17:28]
Tabby
Yeah. So my dad would send that to me as a postcard when he was away when I was little, and he would always say that I was the girl, and then that was the ermine. And then when I was little, I always pretended that my demon was an ermine.
- [17:40]
Dominic Sambrook
Oh, that's nice.
- [17:42]
Tabby
Thanks.
- [17:42]
Dominic Sambrook
Those artworks, the painter uses the animal as a sort of. There is a link between the creature and the person. The animal is meant to reflect some aspect of the sitter, the. The subject of the portrait's personality.
- [17:56]
Tabby
Yeah.
- [17:56]
Dominic Sambrook
And this is what Philip Pullman does with his demons. So to give the example of Lyra and Pantalimon, Pantalimon kind of is Lyra, but is not Lyra. So Pantalymon is Lyra's soul, her conscience, her friend, her guide. He reflects aspects of her personality. And because she's a child, and therefore she's changing and developing all the time, so is Pantalymon. So when we first meet him, what is he? He's a moth or something, isn't he?
- [18:22]
Tabby
Yeah. A child's demon can change into anything,
- [18:25]
Dominic Sambrook
which is a lovely. It's a lovely idea. It's about the sort of the immutability of your personality, but also, you know, you. You can take on. I mean, for. For a narrative point of view, it means that the demon can be a bird, one minute, a bear, you know,
- [18:40]
Tabby
dog, whatever, depending on your mood as well. So if you're angry, your demon might turn into a lion or something like that.
- [18:45]
Dominic Sambrook
And you're born in Philip Horn's world, clutching or holding Your demon aren't. Your demon is part of you.
- [18:51]
Tabby
Yeah.
- [18:51]
Dominic Sambrook
And they can't be separated from you. And actually, crucially, you said, you know, an adult's demon is fixed. This is mirroring the way in which your personality, your. Your soul, for want of a better word, is fixed. When you are a teenager, you become who you're going to be. So at one point in the book, Lyra's sailing up to the north and she's talking to a sailor and she says, why do they settle down? And the sailor says, it's part of growing up. There'll be a time when you're tired of his changing about and you'll want to settle kind of form for him as you do, of course, for yourself. Oh, by the way, your demon is usually the opposite gender from you. Not always. Yes, but, but most of the time. And actually that sailor says to her, there are times when your demon. You're not happy with the form that your demon takes. And what that's reflecting is people who are not happy in their own skin are not happy with themselves. They're uncomfortable or whatever, as so many people are.
- [19:44]
Tabby
Of course, that's the thing. Demons brilliantly reveal things about a character without Philip Pullman having to explicitly spell it out. So really interestingly, for instance, in La Belle Sauvage, which is the prequel book to this series, there is a character whose demon is a hyena and he beats it. And it's emblematic of his self loathing for himself, how much he hates himself, how uncomfortable he is with himself. So it's very, very interesting that. I honestly think it's a truly, truly unique concept.
- [20:12]
Dominic Sambrook
It's a brilliant idea. So you used to think your demon was an ermine, did you?
- [20:16]
Tabby
I think just because of that postcard and. Cause Lyra often had one. But I mean, speaking of which, at the end of this episode, I am going to reveal to our listeners and viewers, Dominic, what your demon will be. You know I do, yeah. I think I know you well enough to make a sound judgment on that. So if people want to meet the real Dominic Sambrook, come on.
- [20:36]
Dominic Sambrook
No one wants to meet that person. But also, knowing as I do, it's so obviously going to be like a warthog or something.
- [20:43]
Tabby
That's so predictable. Honestly.
- [20:45]
Dominic Sambrook
It's going to be like a hippo. Going to be so depressing. Let's talk a little bit about the, about the book.
- [20:50]
Tabby
So now we've explained demons. Yeah. Let's get into the plot. We start in Oxford. That opening reading is where the book begins with Lyra, a mischievous orphan, Lyra Balaqua, and her demon, Pantalyman, who we've met. And they're trying to sneak into the Retiring Room of Jordan College. And this is where she's lived all her life, raised by the servants and the scholars of the college. And while hiding in the Retiring Room, she sees the Master of Jordan slip a powder into a glass of wine for a man who will soon be arriving. And we learn is called Lord Asriel. And we also learn is Lyra's uncle. So the implication is that he's going to try and poison Lord Asriel. Lyra jumps out at the last minute and prevents Lord Asriel from drinking the wine. And because of this, then she spends the rest of the evening hiding in the cupboard, watching Lord Asriel give this talk to the scholars. And the talk is all about Dust. And this is a mysterious substance linked to human consciousness. And Lord Asriel proves to the scholars over the course of this lecture that parallel worlds exist, that Dust has something to do with the connection between a human and their demon. Anyway, he's later exiled to the Arctic. Meanwhile, and this is kind of the thriller mystery element of the book. Across the country, children are going missing. And they are being kidnapped by a secret group known as the Gobblers. But this is linked. There are rumors that this is linked to a beautiful woman whose demon is a golden monkey, but we know nothing more than that. Then a glamorous woman arrives at Oxford. And this is Mrs. Coulter. And we don't know anything about her, but she totally captivates and enchants Lyra. And as a result, Lyra goes with her back to London. But as she's leaving Jordan, two things happen. She realizes that her best friend Roger, the kitchen boy, is missing. And this worries her because of all the children that have been kidnapped.
- [22:34]
Dominic Sambrook
And this is the motor of the narrative. Cause she's gonna want to find Roger, right?
- [22:39]
Tabby
Exactly. Exactly. Roger has been taken by the Gobblers. Lyra later sets out to find him. But she's also given this mysterious device by the Master of Jordan and told to keep secret. And this is an alethiometer, or a truth teller. And it is a heavy golden compass, hence the title of the book in America. The golden compass. With several hands and pictures around the dials of its face. And it can answer almost any question. But it takes years and years and years of study to learn how to read it and learn how to interpret what it tells you. Strangely, though, Lyra learns over the course of weeks, we don't know why. And this instrument, the Golden Compass, is named after the golden compass that God uses to create the universe from chaos in Book 7 of Milton's Paradise Lost. So there you see his influence again, and it's then stayed the fervid wheels. And in his hand he took the golden compasses, prepared in God's eternal store to circumscribe the universe and all created things. So here the compasses are used to kind of create order and build barriers, whereas in Northern Lights, Pullman does the opposite. The alethiometer fractures the limitations of the universe because it can provide all knowledge. So in its provision of Its endless provision of answers, it kind of belies traditional Christian teachings.
- [23:55]
Dominic Sambrook
It's a tool of liberation rather than control.
- [23:58]
Tabby
Yeah, exactly. It's an instrument of endless knowledge and therefore liberation. But, Dominic, take us through the next part of the book.
- [24:04]
Dominic Sambrook
Lyra makes a couple of discoveries, doesn't she? So she discovers that actually Mrs. Scalter is leading the Gobblers, so she's a baddie. And they're actually the General Ablation Board, and they're part of the Magisterium, which is basically the Church and which is the sort of oppressive, authoritarian institution that controls Lyra's world. And basically the Gobblers, the Church, the Magisterium, as they're called, are kidnapping these children. They're going to experiment on them in some way. Lyra escapes, she runs away. She's taken up with these people called the Gyptians, who are kind of. I mean, they're basically Gypsies, kind of Romany people who live on canal boats and sort of sail around the Fens, talking to Dutchman. And with the Egyptians, she goes off to the north, the Arctic, to try and rescue. Try and track down her mate Roger and rescue these kidnapped children. And she discovers. When she's there, I mean, it's a bit of a spoiler, but not that much. She discovers that the experiments are the. The Magisterium are trying to. They're using a sort of guillotine device to separate people from their demons. So to basically cut off your soul, I suppose.
- [25:09]
Tabby
This is an unthinkably awful thing to do in this world. Like, it's compared at one point to, like, cutting off the genital organs of small boys or something. Like, it's truly heinous.
- [25:22]
Dominic Sambrook
I was about to say that's the obvious parallel is the practice of castrating boys to make castrati singers.
- [25:30]
Tabby
Exactly.
- [25:31]
Dominic Sambrook
So all kinds of exciting antics. She meets an armored bear Called Jorik Bernason. He's brilliant. I love him.
- [25:38]
Tabby
Love him.
- [25:38]
Dominic Sambrook
He's a great creation, actually. So these talking bears that wear armor. Fighting bears. She meets some witches. I know you love the witches, Tabby.
- [25:45]
Tabby
I do.
- [25:46]
Dominic Sambrook
You named your cat after a witch, I think, didn't you?
- [25:48]
Tabby
Seraphina Pekala. I did, yeah.
- [25:51]
Dominic Sambrook
And basically, after all kinds of exciting adventures, she rescues Roger and she goes to try and find her uncle, Lord Asriel, this guy who was almost poisoned at the beginning of the book. They're up in the north, in the Arctic, and she thinks that basically, you know, Lord Asriel has been taken prisoner. She wants to rescue him and she wants to give him the alethiometer, and that's her kind of mission. And actually, when she gets there and meets up with him, what happens next is much more terrible and more devastating than she could possibly have imagined.
- [26:26]
Tabby
It will literally shatter her world.
- [26:28]
Dominic Sambrook
Yeah, it will shatter her world. Very good, Tammy.
- [26:30]
Tabby
Thank you.
- [26:31]
Dominic Sambrook
So, the world. Let's talk a tiny bit about the world, the fantasy world. So the funny thing about this is a fantasy book is that basically it's one of the things I'm slightly Pullman skeptic about is that for somebody who's made a great name for himself and been incredibly successful writing fantasy, he's generally pretty down on fantasy, isn't he? So even though he's created this world, he sort of distances himself from other fantasy writers. That said, I think the world is very well observed and it's fun. And I can see why a child reader would want to, you know, escape into it. So, for example, starting in Oxford, it's funny how Oxford plays a part in so many of these kind of fantasy worlds. So obviously CS Lewis was at Oxford. JRR Tolkien wrote the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings at Oxford. It works because Oxford feels like a fantastical place, especially to outsiders. It's got all the colleges, it's got buildings of weird names, it's got the weird rituals and traditions, the kind of honey colored stone and all, and the paintings and all of that kind of thing. It feels like a fantastic landscape already. And what he does, I think, really nicely is he brings in elements like the people on the canal barges, the Gyptians and all of that kind of thing. And it feels like a richly observed, immersive landscape. For a child reader, I would say it definitely does.
- [27:51]
Tabby
But also because you don't need to do much to our Oxford, the real Oxford, to make it fantastical, as you say, he brilliantly integrates the fantastical elements of the story into the Northern Lights, but in such a way that it's very believable. And it lulls you into forgetting sometimes that this is a fantasy and not kind of just an adventure story, you know, because the world is full of real scientific principles from our world. And this anchors us in plausible reality throughout even while we're encountering, you know, armored bears, demons, witches. Because I think in Northern Light, the world building, the magic and the fantasy, it's just not the point. It's a book or a series far more preoccupied with kind of existential questions from our world, which he then maps onto this strange replica of it. And it also gives demons a kind of unique imaginative value because you can almost believe that they could exist in our world in a way that, say, Hogwarts can't they fit in more easily?
- [28:50]
Dominic Sambrook
It's more rooted, you think, than the world of, of Hogwarts.
- [28:54]
Tabby
Yeah, exactly.
- [28:56]
Dominic Sambrook
It's. Well, it's less silly, I guess. I don't mean silly to be a criticism.
- [28:59]
Tabby
No. But it's conceivable that people could walk around and that like there is actually a point towards the end of the trilogy where we realize that we all do have demons, you just can't see them in our world, you know, it's that kind of thing. But I do think as well that, you know, what you said about how Pullman's quite down on fantasy, like he said before, that he doesn't much care for it, that he didn't want to write a pure fantasy of the Tolkien sort unconnected at any point to the real world, because the real world was exactly what fiction ought to be dealing with. I think that's not true. I actually think he's being disingenuous there. I think that's something he exaggerates in order to kind of drive home his, apparently drive home his sort of anti religious message. Because fantasy can have a softening effect on, I don't know, like a strong point or a strong message. And so rooting the imaginative features of this book in reality theoretically keeps the link between the villains of the book, the church, and the church of our world much more oblique. I don't think that's entirely fair though, because you can. This is a fantasy. It's a world full of strange beings.
- [29:57]
Dominic Sambrook
Well, I think it's wrong on two counts. So first of all, he has created a very attractive and immersive fantasy world, even if he denies it. And secondly, somebody like Tolkien, or I mean especially Tolkien, actually, he is Writing about the real world. I mean, the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit completely reflect the world of the world. You know, early 20th century Britain. Tolkien's own experience in the First World War, the fact that he's writing in the Second World War, it's nonsense to say that. It's pure escapism and it's unconnected with the Oxford that Tolkien was living in when he wrote about it.
- [30:29]
Tabby
But also, ironically, given his scathing for CS Lewis, this is a fantasy that actually in many ways does resemble Narnia. You know, Narnia is a strange, you know, inconsistent mix of legend and mythology and folklore and made up mythical beings with, you know, there's nothing to root them in any kind of consistent, I don't know, mythos.
- [30:51]
Dominic Sambrook
You will remember my favorite Narnia beast is at the end of the London Witson wardrobe, there's a bull with the head of a man.
- [31:00]
Tabby
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
- [31:02]
Dominic Sambrook
Not even a man with the head of a bull.
- [31:03]
Tabby
It's totally random. It's one big mystical trip. But that is also true of Pullman. It's so random. So you have these armored bears that speak, and their armor is kind of like a soul, and they live in this sort of spartan society and they have this primal wisdom and have flying witches who are kind of like pagan goddesses, you know, beautiful and young, and they fly around the air holding pine branches. And then you have Lee Scoresby, who's a human aeronaut from Texas. Yeah, from Texas. He flies around an air balloon. There's nothing magical about him but just how highlights, how random it all is. He's a cowboy from the Wild west talking to a flying witch.
- [31:40]
Dominic Sambrook
Yeah, but that's the fun of it, isn't it? That's the fun of it, yeah. It's wonderful.
- [31:42]
Tabby
I have no problem with this. I love it.
- [31:44]
Dominic Sambrook
Lots of books of that kind aimed at that kind of readership. I would say so from about 10 to 15 or something, they have this kind of mad mix of like hot air balloons, you know, zeppelins, talking animals, all that stuff. And it's fine. A child never questions that because a child is arguably a more sophisticated reader than an adult. So a child is basically, you know, it's fine. It's a fiction you can put in anything, whereas an adult will very boringly demand consistency. So you massively got into this through Lyra. Right, that's. I'm imagining that a lot of girls in particular who read this book see themselves as Lyra. Of course you would. Just as a boy would see Themselves as Harry Potter.
- [32:20]
Tabby
Yeah. I dressed up as her for National Book Day.
- [32:23]
Dominic Sambrook
Did you?
- [32:23]
Tabby
Whatever it was called.
- [32:24]
Dominic Sambrook
What does Lyra wear? What did Lyra wear?
- [32:26]
Tabby
I wore a very hot fur coat and mittens, which in the middle of Kenya was really uncomfortable.
- [32:33]
Dominic Sambrook
Oh, my word. Like so many child protagonists in these kinds of adventure stories, she's an orphan. It's really important to get their child's parents off stage so that they can be free to have adventures and things. Although actually in this book, her parents are then brought back on stage. And she's been raised in Oxford, hasn't she? She's very independent. She's a fun character, I think. She's stubborn and she's a little bit spiky and kind of headstrong. Yeah, she likes to explore. Climb up on the roof and she steals barges and she messes around and goes into places she's not meant to go into in the cellars and all that kind of thing.
- [33:11]
Tabby
She's rude to figur authority. All the good things.
- [33:14]
Dominic Sambrook
Yeah. There's an interesting contrast between her and Pantalyman, her demon. She's more daring and reckless and all of these things. And he is more cautious, isn't he? He's a bit more like her conscience, who's sort of the brake on her ambitions, you know, Are you sure? Don't. Shouldn't we be careful? All that kind of thing.
- [33:31]
Tabby
Yeah, he's kind of her protector. And his. His name is a nod to this because it's Pan plus Elemon in Greek. And that's merciful, compassionate. And that's a bit. That contrasts. Lyra's kind of headstrong, you know, slightly rude, rebellious, danger, loving streak. This is a massive, massive part of her character. She's actually called Silver Tongue by the polar bears when she manages to win back her friend Yorik Bernison's throne by telling a big lie, basically. And so she. And she takes great pride in this trait of hers, being able to trick people. But she's also loving and loyal and she inspires great love in others. So the witches, the bears, Lee Scoresby. But she's never older than she is, you know, she's clearly a child throughout, with a child's worldview, a child's interests, a child's excitement and this naivety, you know, there are scenes, for instance, when she's curled up asleep in a hot air balloon and these adults are speaking above her about this great destiny that sits on her shoulders. And this makes her quite a pitiable figure, actually. You know, a child with a Great destiny.
- [34:39]
Dominic Sambrook
It's a classic kind of children's book trick to say of the narrator or the protagonist or whatever. Like Harry Potter.
- [34:46]
Tabby
Yeah, it's the hero's arc, isn't it?
- [34:47]
Dominic Sambrook
It's classic, the hero's arc called Luke Skywalker or something. You know, a great destiny has been foretold for you all this kind of thing. And, and it's. And it's for this reason that the enemy, the Magisterium, fear you.
- [34:57]
Tabby
But this is quite a unique destiny,
- [34:59]
Dominic Sambrook
I would say, in her case. Yes. Because she.
- [35:02]
Tabby
It's bound up in the Bible, like all great destinies.
- [35:06]
Dominic Sambrook
She is Eve.
- [35:07]
Tabby
The second Eve.
- [35:08]
Dominic Sambrook
The second Eve. Yeah, exactly. She's going to fall in love. She's going to commit an act of sin or disobedience or whatever. The falling in love will do this. She is also going to be guilty of a terrible mistake or a betrayal. Yeah, you describe it as a betrayal. I mean, it's not a conscious betrayal, is it? It's an inadvertent betrayal that will lead to this horrible, horrible act of violence at the end the of of the book against her great friend Roger, and after which the world will never be the same again. And that sort of trauma that, that guilt that she's been partly responsible for, that kind of lives with her, doesn't it?
- [35:44]
Tabby
Yeah, but we don't. We don't find out what that is till the end. And we don't know a lot about this prophecy either. We just know that the Magisterium fears her specifically and they call her the second Eve. You know, this figure who's going to bring about some kind of vague new beginning for humanity that who will commit some great act of disobedience and in doing so will destroy the Authority, the God of this world. But we don't know anything more than that. But if Lyra is the Eve of this book, then her mother, as we will discover, resembles Lilith from the Bible. And Lilith in the. In Jewish folklore was Adam's first wife who was banished for not being submissive. And she subsequently viewed as a very demonic figure, a woman who goes around actually stealing people's babies. And this. This actually bears an uncanny resemblance to the woman revealed to be Lyra's mother. So, Dominic, would you like to give the game away? Massive spoiler incoming.
- [36:39]
Dominic Sambrook
Yeah, I think people would have worked, even if people haven't read the book, would have worked out that Basically this character, Mrs. Coulter, this incredibly glamorous woman, is Lyra's mother. To me, she's the best character in the book, apart from the armored bear, Iorek Bernison, who I really like. She was played by Nicole Kidman in the film.
- [36:55]
Tabby
Very well, I thought.
- [36:56]
Dominic Sambrook
I like Ruth Wilson, actually, in the TV series, I think Ruth Wilson. Ruth Wilson's brilliant as her.
- [37:00]
Tabby
Yeah, but you've got flesh in the game in your. It's not with Ruth Wilson flesh, not
- [37:05]
Dominic Sambrook
even skin in the game. I've got flesh in the game.
- [37:09]
Tabby
She's a big fan of the Rest Is History. So that does reflect very well on her. You're on the show.
- [37:13]
Dominic Sambrook
What a great person. What a great person.
- [37:15]
Tabby
The reason Mrs. Coulter is so interesting is because she's basically the arch villain of this series. But there are these moments where she can't help but betray a real love for Lyra. And this almost redeems her at certain points.
- [37:29]
Dominic Sambrook
Yeah, her daughter. Exactly. Her daughter Lyra.
- [37:31]
Tabby
Her daughter. Exactly.
- [37:32]
Dominic Sambrook
And, you know, she's a baddie from the beginning because her demon is a baddie. And he's a demon.
- [37:37]
Tabby
Gives it away.
- [37:38]
Dominic Sambrook
Yeah, he's a. He's this incredibly sort of excessively luxuriant monkey.
- [37:42]
Tabby
He's beautiful.
- [37:43]
Dominic Sambrook
Yeah, he's got really long, silky fair, but in a kind of disturbing way, I think.
- [37:47]
Tabby
Yeah, but he's got this creepy little face and these creepy little hands. And unusually, he's the only major demon in the book to never have a name and to never, ever see. And I think this is an ingenious little device because it represents the hidden, repressed evil in Mrs. Coulter and how she silences her conscience and she battles with her demon more than most. She treats it with this kind of cold detachment and even physical cruelty. She hits it at one point. So that's a bit like. You feel the pain of that slap. And particularly when it vies against her kind of upsurges of love for Lyra. But the monkey itself can be shockingly violent.
- [38:25]
Dominic Sambrook
Her monkey is her. I was going to say her id. That's not quite right. But her monkey is her dark side.
- [38:31]
Tabby
It's Mr. Hyde.
- [38:32]
Dominic Sambrook
Yeah, it's Mr. Hyde. Her monkey is the. Is the evil within her, but there is also good. I mean, that's what makes her such a great character, is that she is torn between her enormous ambition and her kind of the cold side of her personality because she's been kidnapping all these children. And the scenes when she does that, that, you know, they're quite chilling. Like, she basically will seduce children with chocolate and stuff and then snatch them away. I mean, it's that classic fear that all children Have. But at the same time, when it comes to Lyra, she does show her genuine affection. You know, there are flashes of real emotion and whatnot. And there was something quite fairy tale, I think, about her. Isn't there that idea of the woman tempting you away with chocolate or whatever?
- [39:12]
Tabby
Yeah, definitely. And, but I actually think that's deeply, deeply sinister. And we know that Philip Pullman loves fairy tales and folklore. You know, he rewrote the grim fairy tales and the kind of horror of them, the creepiness of them is massively, massively emphasized. And because of this, you know, the idea that she's this sort of beautiful fairy godmother figure, it can be really, really sinister. And her sweetness becomes really saccharine. And this is never ever more true than this really horrible scene actually when she tempts a young Oxford urchin called Tony Makarios away so that he can be kidnapped and sent to Bolvanger. And she stands there in the shadows watching him. And then kind of almost, I don't know, she sort of tempts him over and her monkey is playing with his demon, almost flirting with his demon. And she sort of says, do you like, you know, hot chocolate? And then she says, oh well, I've got more than I could possibly drink. Why don't you come and help me drink it? And then he's, you know, captivated and follows her.
- [40:14]
Dominic Sambrook
Do you know what though, Tabby? Just think about that. That's again, I mean, I know Philip Pullman hates CS Lewis, but that's the White Witch and the lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe with Edmund and the Turkish Delight, isn't it?
- [40:23]
Tabby
It is, it totally is. So he follows her into this, locked, into this locked room and locked door. And then she opens it and he goes in. And then the last line is, Tony will never come out, at least by that entrance. And he'll never see his mother again. So you can see that, you know, Mrs. Coulter's incredible beauty and her elegance and her grace and her sophistication, it all serves as a kind of mask hiding a manipulative, cruel and power hungry nature. And this ambition of hers is crucial. Cause it's why she gets involved with the Magisterium in the first place, who we'll get to properly later. Cause she's one of their agents and she's her charm. They use her charm to advance their own agenda. For instance, she wins the loyalty of this usurper polar bear king, who Lyra then has to have vanquished by her friend Iorek Bernison. And all the while she's actually using this to build her own power base. And this is why she sets up the Gobblers, the general ablation board, you know, to kidnap children and experiment on them.
- [41:28]
Dominic Sambrook
All right, I'm going to share something with the listeners now. I made a terrible mistake before this, this recording started because I said to Tabby, you're massively into this book, Tabby, and I think you should do loads and loads of talking. And the result of that is that we have taught for too long as this, some people, some podcasts are a massive trade secret. Some podcasts struggle to fill their allotted half hour. That is, that is not an issue that we have on this show. After the break, all kinds of excitement will be revealing who Lyra's father is. We'll be revealing why they're conducting these terrible experiments. We'll be exploring the influence of John Milton and William Blake on Philip Pullman's world. And very exciting for everybody, I will be revealing what Tabby's demon is. So please don't go away. To realize the future America needs, we understand what's needed from us to face each threat head on. We've earned our place in the fight for our nation's future. We are marines. We were made for this. Lifelock, how can I help?
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Dominic Sambrook
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Tabby
My refund though. I'm freaking out.
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Dominic Sambrook
to help you hit your money goals. Start filing today in the Credit Karma app. Welcome back everybody, to the book club. Now, before the break, we said that we'd be solving all kinds of exciting mysteries, including the identities of our own demons. But first of all, let's talk about the identity of Lyra's father because her mother has been revealed as this, as the sort of super villain in some ways of the first book. Mrs. Coulter, who is her father? Tabby.
- [43:43]
Tabby
Well, Lyra's father Turns out to be her mysterious uncle, Lord Asriel, because he had an affair with Mrs. Coulter before Lyra was born. Mrs. Coulter was married. He ended up murdering Mrs. Coulter's husband to protect Lyra, and then is penniless as a result and gives Lyra to the scholars of Jordan College to be raised. And Lord Asriel is, for me, I think, the most interesting and charismatic character of this book. And he is in fact the Devil. But we will explain why that is later. So his name, Azrael, it may come from Azrael, the angel of death in Jewish mysticism and Islamic folklore. He describes large, muscular, physically powerful. He has dark hair, sharp features, and a face that is really intense and severe. I think in terms of his face. James McAvoy did him really, really well in the TV show.
- [44:33]
Dominic Sambrook
Yeah.
- [44:34]
Tabby
But Daniel Craig really got his mannerisms, I thought his kind of chilliness. His chilliness is constantly emphasized. His hardness, his ruthless. And this comes out in his demon, who's a snow leopard, a beautiful snow leopard called Stelmaria. And she is ferocious and powerful like him. But also she reveals how confident he is in himself because her behavior rarely diverges from him. And both are very closed. They give nothing away. So he's a darkly charismatic character, but unlike Mrs. Coulter, reveals almost no affection whatsoever for his daughter Lyra.
- [45:09]
Dominic Sambrook
Yeah, he's quite unlikable, I would say, in this book.
- [45:11]
Tabby
He's not easy to like.
- [45:13]
Dominic Sambrook
No, no, he's something. He's maybe admirable in some ways in that he has this incredible poise and self possession. And he's clearly extremely bright and visionary and ambitious. And he's free thinking, which is why he ends up being imprisoned.
- [45:30]
Tabby
He's eloquent and persuasive.
- [45:32]
Dominic Sambrook
Yeah. But there is a real coldness to him, as we discover at the end, because he is the person to whom Lyra will inadvertently betray her best friend, Roger. And he is the person who will carry out this terrible act.
- [45:45]
Tabby
He's hell bent on this mission, basically.
- [45:48]
Dominic Sambrook
Yeah. And this is the devil, the devilish side of him, I suppose that he is in rebellion against the Church and against God and against the kind of rules of this world. He has been doing all these kind of scientific kind of experiments and quests and things. And he has become convinced that this is just one of many parallel worlds. And you can glimpse these other parallel worlds through the northern lights, hence the title of the book. And he believes that with a massive burst of energy, you can kind of break down the barriers between the worlds. You can create A bridge to other worlds and you can cross. And the way to create this burst of energy, it's a bit like splitting the atom. It is the act of severing a child from their demon, basically cutting out somebody's soul. And he has been up there in the north, waiting for a child to appear so that he can do it. The child that appears is Lyra. And he is really shocked because it's his daughter. It's like that kind of, you know, this is the person you're gonna have to sacrifice. A very biblical kind of moment, or a moment from a Greek myth or something.
- [46:57]
Tabby
Yeah, it's Isaac and Abraham.
- [46:59]
Dominic Sambrook
Isaac and Abraham, Exactly. And he sort of staggers and he says, oh, no. Oh, terrible. Or whatever. It's a very, very dramatic scene, by the way. I think it's brilliantly done. And then he sees behind her, her mate Roger, who she's rescued. And he thinks, oh, brilliant. I can kill him instead. And so with, you know, to Lyra's horror, I mean, it's a fantastic scene. The narrative building towards this climax, he conducts the experiment to sever Roger from his demon. And this is what tears a hole in the universe through which he can travel between worlds. And this moment, you know, it's. It's. It's a bravura piece of writing, actually, because all the narrative has been building to this. There's been a sense of gathering momentum. All the characters have kind of converged on this point. There's a kind of battle raging, and Lyra's kind of rushed to try to rescue Roger, but she's too late. And it's as though, you know, it's both the sort of the intimate drama of Roger losing his soul, but also the cosmic kind of drama of the heavens being split apart. This sort of pure energy ripping through the skies. As Lord Asriel builds this bridge to another world.
- [48:12]
Tabby
There's even romance. Cause he reunites with Mrs. Coulter for the first time. And Lyra sees them silhouetted against the northern light, kind of tearing at one another, like embracing, but separating, both bent on different tasks.
- [48:29]
Dominic Sambrook
Yeah, I was rereading that scene this morning. I was really, you know, marveling at what a brilliant bit of writing those final pages of the book are. It really is to read that. I never read it as a child. I can only imagine how thrilling it must have been to be a child reader for the first time getting to that point. It's devastating. It's emotionally devastating. It's very unusual, actually, in a children's book that the Quest on which the protagonist has set out fails and her friend effectively is sacrificed.
- [48:58]
Tabby
But it's a joke. You get such a strong sense that it is the death of something for Lyra, not just the death of Roger. Some innocence in her, some naivety is broken as he sort of lies there dying in her lap. And she watches her two kind of mighty ferocious parents kind of embracing in the light of another world.
- [49:16]
Dominic Sambrook
And do you know what?
- [49:17]
Tabby
It's so dramatic.
- [49:18]
Dominic Sambrook
Do you know what? So many children's books for this age group involve a child searching for their father or their mother. I read loads of books to Arthur when he was growing up, my son, that involved basically, particularly a girl searching for her father. She's got a map and she's, you know, that kind of thing. It's such a hackneyed device. It's very unusual that the girl searches for her father and her father turns out to be in some ways the villain of the story who's going to end the book with this act of horrendous violence.
- [49:47]
Tabby
But it's important to say, to explain why it is that Lord Asriel is willing to commit what is essentially a murder. Like, what is he trying to gain? Why is he trying to blow a hole between universes? Well, he wants to create his own republic in another world, free from the authority of the Magisterium, in order to destroy the Magisterium and destroy the Magisterium's God, the Authority. So let's explain a little bit more about the Magisterium, because they are kind of the arch villains of this world of Lyra's universe.
- [50:25]
Dominic Sambrook
Yeah. So this is the Magisterium is basically the Church, isn't it? It's the antagonist of the series. It is not the papacy. It's this sort of network of bureaucratic institutions that are often feuding against each other. They're kind of rival departments. It' quite well done, this. It's sort of. It's how government works.
- [50:43]
Tabby
It's quite communist, isn't it?
- [50:44]
Dominic Sambrook
There's a lot of criminology to it, but there's. It's any kind of big bureaucracy where there are different. Lots of departments kind of fighting each other. Let's call it the Church for simplicity's sake. The Church is basically trying to suppress or control scientific knowledge. It teaches there are only two worlds. So there's our world and there's heaven and hell, but not all these parallel worlds. The Church is particularly exercised by this thing that we've mentioned a couple of times but never really explained, which is called Dust. So dust. The Church believes dust is kind of original sin. The thing that gets the Magisterium going is Dust. And they think that if they can get rid of Dust, they can get rid of sin. And what is dust? Do you want to explain dust?
- [51:25]
Tabby
It's also called Rossakov particles. It's kind of. It's kept mysterious and secret for most of the book. We don't really know what it is, but we learn more about it, as Lyra does, and we learn from her spying the retiring room, that it can be seen through certain kind of scientific instruments. Physically, it looks like a fountain of glowing particles. It's described as having. As a shimmering golden light. And we learn that it's conscious. It's attracted to sentient beings, but particularly adults whose demons have settled. It swarms around you. At adolescence, children have far less dust than adults. And there's some indication that's kind of linked to dark. Dark. The dark matter of. Of our world. So we don't really know what it is. They don't really know what it is. We find out that in the book it's named from the Bible. Pullman does this quite cleverly. It's. It's from the third chapter of Genesis. So in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground, for out of it was thou taken, for dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return. So that's what God says to Adam and Eve when they have. Have fallen, when they've eaten fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, they have been thrown from the Garden of Eden. They've committed the ultimate act of disobedience.
- [52:41]
Dominic Sambrook
But in his version of the Bible, there were demons and all that kind of thing.
- [52:44]
Tabby
Yeah. So he rewrites Genesis 3, where rather than Adam and Eve realizing they're naked, they realize that they can see the form of their demons.
- [52:53]
Dominic Sambrook
Yeah, the eyes of both of them were opened and they saw the true form of their demons.
- [52:56]
Tabby
So we learn from this then, that. That dust is original sin. And the reason that the Church are trying to cut children away from their demons is. Is they are trying to prevent the influx of dust that comes upon you when you hit adolescence, when you hit puberty and your demon settles. So they're basically trying to reverse. Yeah. What does Mrs. Coulter say?
- [53:17]
Dominic Sambrook
So Mrs. Coulter says this explicitly to Lyra. She says Dust is something bad, something wrong, something wicked. Grownups and their demons are infected with dust. It's too late for them, but an operation on children would keep them safe from it.
- [53:28]
Tabby
They're trying to reverse the fall. Basically, they're trying to keep children innocent forever. In fact, what this cut does by separating you from your demon, I suppose symbolically you could say by preventing that point at which in life you become sexually mature, you have. You start to experience things, you start to question the world. You gain new knowledge by physically preventing that from happening in the book, it turns these children into tragic, genuinely tragic, kind of zombie like waifs. They tend to die without their demons. The demon dies straight away, almost. And there's this scene where Lyra encounters a child who's been severed. This is actually the Tony Makarios that we described being tempted by Mrs. Coulter earlier on.
- [54:14]
Dominic Sambrook
It's a really sad moment, isn't it?
- [54:16]
Tabby
And she finds him cowering in a shed in the middle of the north. And because he's lost his demon ratta, he is clinging to a frozen piece of fish desperately. And that's not comical at all. It's actually absolutely tragic. And all the other characters who encounter him are terrified of him. Because the idea of someone being without a demon is so monstrous, so abominable, you know, it's so unnatural, which means that we should see any interference in this natural process as an abomination as well.
- [54:51]
Dominic Sambrook
This is some of the stuff that obviously, you know, ultra Catholic critics didn't like about his book, is that he. Is he. His target. I said his target was. I said his real target was CS Lewis. But actually his real, real target is the idea of original sin and the idea that, you know, sexuality, experience, maturity mean a loss of innocence and that these are bad things. He thinks these are good things and he wants to celebrate them. And the antagonists in his book have a sort of almost a fantasy image of innocence, childhood innocence, that they want to preserve. Philip Pullman wants to celebrate the things that they regard as sinful and wicked. And that's why, you know, the act of cutting off your soul or trying to distance yourself from knowledge and experience, and things are bad things for him and bad things in the book.
- [55:45]
Tabby
Yeah.
- [55:46]
Dominic Sambrook
And the character of Lord Asriel, this idea of his kind of republic of heaven and, you know, he's going to take on God and he's going to fight against the church and all of that kind of thing. He is obviously inspired, isn't he, by a character from Paradise Lost, namely Satan?
- [56:03]
Tabby
Yeah, he absolutely is. And Pullman has admitted has owned his debt to John Milton and Paradise Lost by actually saying that in writing the three books of his Dark Materials, he set out to rewrite Paradise Lost in three volumes. And I think he does do that because over the course of the trilogy he charts Lord Asriel's Rebellion and Lyra's Temptation and Fall. Anyway, before we get to why Lord Asriel is basically modelled on Satan from Paradise Lost, do you give us a little bit of background about John Milton? Because he's a really interesting figure and I'm a big fan of him. Is.
- [56:39]
Dominic Sambrook
Yeah, well, Milton's one of the titanic figures of English literature. Maybe not somebody who's as well known as Shakespeare or something, but one of the very few people to be in that league. So Milton was a 17th century poet and polemicist and civil servant actually, who was a fan of the parliamentarians in the Civil War. He was actually Oliver Cromwell's secretary for Foreign Tongues, which is an excellent job title. He is on the sort of. He is on what you might call the more hardline Protestant wing of the religious divide in 17th century England. He's opposed to kings, to the divine right of kings. He's a republican. He thinks, you know, you interpret God and the Bible through your own individual conscience rather than, you know, you don't defer to authority, it's not handed down to you. Yes, exactly. You don't defer to the authority of bishops and kings and so on. You know, Milton is a Cromwellian. Milton is somebody who serves Cromwell. And then after the Restoration, 1660, when the monarchy returns under Charles II, he's imprisoned for a little while and then he kind of, you know, lives quietly in obscurity. He's gone blind.
- [57:50]
Tabby
But it was while he was blind that he wrote these two epic masterpieces, Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. Much more famously, Paradise Lost. And this retells the biblical story of the fall of humanity and through disobedience, but it kind of expands it into this majestic epic about freedom, the misuse of power. And in the poem, Satan, who is a fallen angel who has rebelled against God, he and his fellow fallen angels gather in hell and they decide to continue their rebellion by corrupting humankind, which is God's new creation. And Satan succeeds and is punished alongside Adam and Eve and they are expelled from the Garden of Eden. And the title of this trilogy, his dark material, is actually taken from book two of Paradise Lost. So it's. But all these and their pregnant causes mix confusedly and which thus must ever fight unless the Almighty maker them ordain his dark materials to create more worlds. So this is God, the chaotic matter from which new worlds are made by the Creator. So this is like Lord Asriel ripping a hole in universe. In the universe and, you know, creating a new world of his own in a sense. But in this, he is not the creator. Lord Asriel is a very satanic character.
- [59:03]
Dominic Sambrook
Yeah, well, he is a satanic character because he's Satan. I mean, he's Lucifer. I mean, that's the thing, isn't it? So Satan in Paradise Lost. I mean, the thing that everybody always says about Paradise Lost is Milton makes Satan in some ways the hero of the story.
- [59:20]
Tabby
Yeah, I think that's true.
- [59:22]
Dominic Sambrook
The poem starts with Satan's rebellion underway. Satan is the protagonist. Satan has the courage when the other devils don't. He says, I'm gonna go out. I'm gonna cross the abyss. I'm gonna go to the Garden of Eden. I'll do the dirty work of corrupting Adam and Eve. Yeah, you know, we're kind of with him now at the end. Admittedly he has turned into a snake and he has a pretty sort of miserable end to the story. But it's hard to read Paradise Lost, Milton's great epic, without a sneaking sympathy for this rebellious, brave, independent minded, you know, charismatic character who is Lucifer.
- [60:00]
Tabby
And like this. And this is massively debated. Like, C.S. lewis didn't read it this way at all. You know, he said that Paradise Lost was like a defense of God rather than Satan. But if you compare the way that heaven is described in the poem, it's kind of cold and autocratic and gauzy versus kind of pandemonium where Satan is based. And it's all. And it's like this fiery deluge and it's all colorful and exciting. I think Satan is absolutely the antihero of the Po. And in this, Lord Asriel is a very Satanic figure. As we've said, he's a flawed devil fighting against the autocracy of the church to create a new republic. So in the poem, a heaven of hell. And like Satan, he defines himself in opposition to authority. And you know, he embodies free will. He says to Mrs. Coulter at one point, I wanted to break out. Marissa and I have. And like Satan rebelling against God, Azrael rebels against the authority, the faux God in this world. And both kind of present their rebellion as the fight for knowledge and self determination and freedom.
- [61:00]
Dominic Sambrook
I mean, that's massively important to him. The one thing about him, though, Tabby, the caveat is the book ends with him committing an act of hideous cruelty to Roger. So he's not, he's not a good man. No, he's not a good man. He's a man who will sacrifice anything in pursuit of his knowledge or his power or whatever. Which, if you were of the sort of Tolkien Lewis party, you would say is the ultimate. You know, that's the worst thing.
- [61:26]
Tabby
You can't forgive.
- [61:27]
Dominic Sambrook
It's unforgivable. Exactly. Philip Pullman does kind of forgive it. I mean, I know we're jumping ahead to subsequent books in the trilogy, but to me that's the greatest crime of the whole trilogy.
- [61:36]
Tabby
Yeah, no, it's true. I think that is fair. But I think maybe the point is that, you know, all things must be sacrificed for the sake of a good old fashioned rebellion.
- [61:47]
Dominic Sambrook
Right? I guess so. So we said Milton was one of the big inspirations. The other one is William Blake. And I guess the thing with William Blake is his innocence versus experience, isn't it? So on the one hand you've got the rebellion from Milton against God, and the other you've got the celebration of experience rather than innocence. So this is all about Dust and about. So the Dust is. Dust is experience, Dust is maturity and knowledge and sexuality and all of those kinds of things. Things. And even Lord Asriel thinks of Dust, doesn't he, as a kind of a bad thing.
- [62:18]
Tabby
He doesn't really care about Dust. He kind of says to Mrs. Corter at one point, come with me, come with me to my other world and we'll find the source of Dust and destroy it forever. Yeah, he's against the people that just want to get rid of Dust. But in fact, Dust is.
- [62:33]
Dominic Sambrook
It's secondary to his. To his enterprise, would you say?
- [62:37]
Tabby
I think, yeah, he just doesn't. It's kind of beneath him.
- [62:39]
Dominic Sambrook
But Lyra says at one point, the fact that everybody else, they're all saying it's terrible. I experience sexuality, sin, whatever. And they're clearly bad people. I mean, she's talking about her own parents. She says to her demon, Pantalman, if they all say it's so terrible, then it must be good. And she's the one character who sees that experience may be a better thing than innocence. And the innocence is not something to
- [63:02]
Tabby
be celebrated, but so do the witches who have kind of an innate understanding of the world. They also celebrate dark. So in that we kind of have the celebration of experience over celebrating the loss of innocence. And you've mentioned Blake there. That's a very, very Blakeian principle.
- [63:20]
Dominic Sambrook
Yeah. So Blake, for people who don't know, he's a romantic poet, late 18th, early 19th century. I mean, I Say he's romantic. He's hard to pin down. His contemporaries thought he was deranged, often because he was such a radical. You know, he's a critic, I love him. Of the monarchy, of organized religion, of social injustice, of industrialization, of all of these kinds of things. So he sort of stands apart from his times in many ways. And, you know, running all through Blake's poems and all his works is this hostility to authority, to repression, to hierarchy, to being imprisoned, held down. He thinks the idea of sin is a way to trap people and to bind your desires. He thinks the idea of obedience is wrong.
- [64:06]
Tabby
He doesn't like the church, organized religion and dogma. He famously wrote, priests in black gowns binding with briars my joys and desires, so repressing kind of freedom of thought. And his big thing was he celebrated the imagination. And Pullman implies that dust is linked to imagination and creativity. So which. Which, you know, you gain a great deal of with age and experience.
- [64:32]
Dominic Sambrook
And interesting. There's a link between him and John Milton because Blake wrote, you know, famously about John Milton. Milton, when he wrote about angels and God, it was as though he wrote in fetters. And he felt like he was, you know, he's free when he's writing about devils and hell. And the reason is that. Because he was a true poet and of the devil's party without knowing it.
- [64:53]
Tabby
Yeah, I love that.
- [64:54]
Dominic Sambrook
And this is a. A formula that Philip Pullman has used many times of himself, that he's of the devil's party, that he feels like the devil is the good guy. And it's not that he hates religion. Actually, I think this is one thing people get wrong about Philip Pullman. It's not that he hates religion and he necessarily hates God. What he hates is the idea of dogmatism and being imprisoned by dogma. And it's actually something that. So, I mean, he's had loads of debates with the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams and so on. So actually, some churchmen find Philip Pullman really amiable and interesting because they think he's taking theological ideas really seriously. And what he hates is the idea of repression and conformity. That it's not that he hates being interested in religion. He, in fact, he's said himself many times is an agnostic, not an atheist.
- [65:40]
Tabby
He's like Blake in that Blake loves contradictions. You know, heaven and hell, innocence and experience. The truth is not simple. It's not. It's not as simple as, oh, Philip Pullman hates everything to do with the church, faith, belief, not at all. There's something very actually spiritual about a lot of Pullman's writings. You know, particularly when he writes about the natural world. Like, there's this kind of divine panpsychism to it. You know, the idea that matter is conscious, that God is incarnate in the natural world. That's a very Catholic concept, actually.
- [66:10]
Dominic Sambrook
Right.
- [66:10]
Tabby
As you say, he's just opposed to kind of tyrannical systems. And like Blake. Blake wrote, I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's. There's nothing related to religion in that. That it's much broader, I think.
- [66:22]
Dominic Sambrook
So a question for you, because I know there's obviously so much here about, like, the fall of man, rewriting the book of Genesis, the idea of innocence versus experience, all of this kind of stuff. But when you read this book when you were 12 years old or 11 or 10 or whatever it was, how much of that filtered through? Or was it just because it is? I think that one thing that we've probably not really drawn out as much as we could have done is it's a really exciting adventure story for a child reader. I mean, going to the north, fighting armored bears, being rescued by witches, falling out of hot air balloons. It's great fun. I mean, it is a really fun book. But how much of the existential debate side of it filtered through to you when you were reading it for the first time?
- [67:02]
Tabby
Absolutely none of it, I would say. Okay. The one thing I do remember noting was that there was something going on with the fact that the witches and the polar bears were kind of animals and wild and free and related to nature and untamed, versus this very organized, clinical Bolvanger, which is the place where the children being cut and everything to do with the church was very neat and organized and ordered. A lot of the churchmen had insects as their demons or lizards or whatever.
- [67:28]
Dominic Sambrook
Yeah.
- [67:28]
Tabby
So you could see that there was a contrast there. There was something about the organized nature of the baddies that even a child could recognize. But I read it first and foremost as an adventure story, and then as I grew older, when I reread it at university and. And that I. And I'd kind of fall in love with Blake, that I could see all this far more clearly.
- [67:49]
Dominic Sambrook
But that's why I think he's wrong about C.S. lewis's books, actually.
- [67:52]
Tabby
I agree. Yeah.
- [67:53]
Dominic Sambrook
You can read C.S. lewis's books,' and you're not indoctrinated by Christian propaganda. I mean, it's there, of course, but most people who read the lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe never notice. And it doesn't shape their. I mean, insofar as it does shape their worldview. It shapes it in completely benign way and non dogmatic ways.
- [68:10]
Tabby
Yeah.
- [68:10]
Dominic Sambrook
And I think that's true of this as well. That's why the critics of Philip Pullman, I think are misguided. Because I think most children would read this completely oblivious to the fact that it's an anti clerical book. I mean, it is. I think it's a very anti Catholic book, actually. But I don't think most children would ever pick up on that, frankly.
- [68:29]
Tabby
No, definitely not. It's a great, It's a great story, it's a great book, has great characters.
- [68:36]
Dominic Sambrook
So let's get to the crux of the episode. Enough of existential questions, Tabby. There is going to be talk of people's demons.
- [68:43]
Tabby
Yeah.
- [68:44]
Dominic Sambrook
So I have two thoughts for you.
- [68:47]
Tabby
Okay.
- [68:48]
Dominic Sambrook
And. Well, actually I've really got one. I was going to come up with a sort of insulting joke. One if. If the one you chose for me was unflattering. But I'm actually just. Who's going to go first? Because I feel like this is a really high risk. This is so high risk, high risk conversation.
- [69:05]
Tabby
I feel like it's a shootout where we've both got pistols trained on each other. I think I'm gonna talk you through my process very briefly.
- [69:13]
Dominic Sambrook
Yeah, let's talk about your process.
- [69:14]
Tabby
I basically. I basically have been awake since like 4am going through this in my head.
- [69:21]
Dominic Sambrook
Wow, you're taking this seriously.
- [69:23]
Tabby
Yeah. And I landed at various animals on my way to the truth. So my first thought was there's an ongoing joke between Dominic and I that whenever he does anything particularly weaselly he is smaug from the Hobbit.
- [69:36]
Dominic Sambrook
I never do anything Weasley. Just to be clear.
- [69:39]
Tabby
Fine. You know, cunning. You're cunning.
- [69:40]
Dominic Sambrook
Yeah.
- [69:41]
Tabby
So I started with snake. And then. And then I thought, no, that's harsh. And I moved to a. A papillon dog. Tiny dog, but very smart. And then antonacious. And then I went from the papillon dog. Look it up. It's. It's truly terrifying. And then I landed on otter. Because they're clever and playful. They like to kind of live in burrows and sort of hunker down. But they're, you know, kind of jokesters. But I thought that was quite right. No, no, that wasn't quite right. You're not that kind of cuddly. And then finally I landed on your demon. Da, da, da.
- [70:20]
Dominic Sambrook
Yeah.
- [70:20]
Tabby
Okay. So I think your Demon. Dominic Sambrook would be a raven. Let me tell you why. They are very, very clever. They are socially intelligent. They are. Have conditional loyalty. They are very, very loyal to, you know, certain people. People that you know, people or fellow birds, I guess, that they form strong bonds to. They can be very trusted companions if you earn their loyalty. They are not submissive, they're opinionated. They are playful and mischievous. You know, great banter about flying upside down and stuff like that. And they're curious. So there you go.
- [71:01]
Dominic Sambrook
Oh, tabby. That's nice. I'll take it. Yeah, that was very nice.
- [71:05]
Tabby
Yeah.
- [71:05]
Dominic Sambrook
Wow.
- [71:06]
Tabby
Yeah.
- [71:07]
Dominic Sambrook
Now.
- [71:07]
Tabby
Now you're gonna just read.
- [71:08]
Dominic Sambrook
Can I just ask one small question?
- [71:10]
Tabby
Yeah.
- [71:10]
Dominic Sambrook
Have you genuinely. Have you ever met an opinionated raven?
- [71:15]
Tabby
I. I actually. I actually used Chat GPT to look up the characteristics of a raven and it said it was opinionated. It.
- [71:22]
Dominic Sambrook
I can't believe.
- [71:23]
Tabby
Bird, you don't own.
- [71:24]
Dominic Sambrook
No, I don't, but Chat GPT clearly does. So I did.
- [71:28]
Tabby
I.
- [71:29]
Dominic Sambrook
So I did. I wasted a lot of time and I found a thing online that said it could tell you your spirit animal, which I thought was similar. And I did it for myself and for you to try and work out what yours was poor.
- [71:40]
Tabby
I used my own intuition.
- [71:41]
Dominic Sambrook
I answered all these questions. It took me ages. And then right at the end, it said, right, we're about to unveil the spirit animal. I was like. I pressed, like, enter, and it said, now we want you to give us a pound. And I refused to do that.
- [71:53]
Tabby
You write for not being a free thinker like William Blake, and I refused
- [71:57]
Dominic Sambrook
to do that, so I just had to use my own. I've actually got you down as a lynx.
- [72:02]
Tabby
Seriously?
- [72:03]
Dominic Sambrook
Yeah.
- [72:04]
Tabby
That's epic. I love that you like that.
- [72:06]
Dominic Sambrook
Wow. Yeah. So a lynx is kind of. I don't know. A lynx is slightly solitary. It can. But it's not excessively. They're kind of nocturnal. Stealthy.
- [72:18]
Tabby
Yeah. Smooth operator.
- [72:21]
Dominic Sambrook
Yeah. You've got tufted ears. I think a lynx and a raven. I think that.
- [72:25]
Tabby
That I'm so good.
- [72:27]
Dominic Sambrook
I was so anxious that I was going to be a hippo or something. Deep down, I didn't really want to be a bird, but I'll take. But I mean, if I was going to be a bird. The Radio Times once compared me to an owl. They said I look like a comfortable owl on a day trip.
- [72:39]
Tabby
So you're not sleepy enough to be an owl?
- [72:41]
Dominic Sambrook
No, I think an owl is solitary. Yeah, agreed. I think. But there is a raven. Somebody does have a Raven in the book? No. Isn't it the master of Jordan College or someone like that?
- [72:51]
Tabby
It could well be, but I. The master is not a playful person. Right. Anyway, we need to give this a score out of 10, so I think we should mark it out of unnecessarily malicious golden monkeys.
- [73:04]
Dominic Sambrook
Okay. That's the. That's the index we're using.
- [73:06]
Tabby
Yeah.
- [73:07]
Dominic Sambrook
I'll go first because I know what you're going to give it. I'm going to give it eight.
- [73:11]
Tabby
Okay.
- [73:12]
Dominic Sambrook
I'm giving eight. I'm marking it down for no good reason. I'm probably deducting a point for him. Philip Pullman being cruel to C.S. lewis when C.S. lewis is dead and can't argue back. And I'm also deducting a point because I think Lord Asriel is not sufficiently punished over the course of the trilogy for his poor behavior at the end of the first book.
- [73:32]
Tabby
All right.
- [73:33]
Dominic Sambrook
Feel like Philip Pullman is too much in love with him. And I feel sorry for Roger, who has a terrible, terrible end. I don't think there's sufficient justice for Roger. It's like Barb in Stranger Things who, you know, with a person who was dragged into the swimming pool or something and killed. And people said, justice for Barb, and she never reappeared.
- [73:50]
Tabby
Barb. Yeah, but no one cared about Barb. Let's be honest.
- [73:53]
Dominic Sambrook
I cared about Barb and I care about Roger. So there you go.
- [73:55]
Tabby
I care about Roger. I don't care about Barb. I think you moved the goalpost a bit there, because we're not marking the trilogy, we're marking this book alone. I am gonna give it it a 10. I love this world. It changed my childhood. I love the concept of demons and dust. I love, as a child, you know, Pullman's kind of clean, readable, slightly spare prose. Yeah, it just totally captivated my imagination. And rereading it this time. It did. It did, too, on multiple layers. You know, I liked the. The kind of. Of more Blakeian elements of it, but it's just a great story, and I love Lyra. So there we go.
- [74:33]
Dominic Sambrook
Wonderful. Okay, so we've got something very, very different. So there's absolutely no innocence next week. Just loads of experience because we'll be doing Sally Rooney's Normal People.
- [74:42]
Tabby
Yeah. Back to the Bible. The week after that, Back to the Bible.
- [74:45]
Dominic Sambrook
Back to Adam and Eve, actually, in Cain and Abel with John Steinbeck's east of Eden. Then one of Alan Partridge. We mentioned Alan Partridge. One of his favorite books, the Hound of the Baskervilles.
- [74:55]
Tabby
I thought you were gonna say we're doing Alan Partridge's biography. Not yet.
- [74:58]
Dominic Sambrook
That will come that.
- [74:59]
Tabby
Yeah.
- [75:00]
Dominic Sambrook
And then Tabby's favourite book of all time, Sarah J Maas, Romantasy, A Court Of Thorns and Roses. So that's the fourth book we've got coming up.
- [75:12]
Tabby
That's a lot of experience.
- [75:14]
Dominic Sambrook
And then. That's a lot of experience. And then perhaps. Well, a bit of a nice mixture of innocence and experience. The fifth week from now, because we will be doing Wilkie Collins's great Victorian sensation novel novel, the Woman In White, one of the great thrillers, I think, of all time. So if you're still listening, thank you from me and My Raven and from Tabby and her links. Goodbye. Bye.