I tell stories about telling stories... they're not always true

Along with a group of Year 8 pupils from Graveney School in South West London, I was lucky enough to go along to see author Philip Pullman at the Southbank Centre last week. The event was the launch of this year's London Literature Festival - an annual summer event, which this year features authors including Alan Hollinghurst, Iain Sinclair, Ali Smith, Alexander McCall Smith, Hanif Kureshi and Michael Morpurgo.

Pullman really needs no introduction: the award-winning author of the His Dark Materials trilogy, as well as numerous other books for children and adults is probably one of the most respected authors working today. In conversation with broadcaster Peter Kemp, he got the event under way with a discussion of his own childhood reading, speaking out strongly in support of libraries, which he described as a 'fantastic treasure chest' for readers, whilst planned cuts are 'an act of shocking vandalism'. Recalling his own early love of comics such as The Eagle, he was also keen to stress the importance of pictures alongside words, suggesting that 'we should take visual literacy as seriously as verbal literacy'. He is himself currently working on a new project inspired by the heroes of his childhood comics, a film script entitled John Blake.

After university, Pullman qualified as a teacher, which he jokingly suggested he chose as a career 'because you get long holidays'. He taught in schools for 12 years, where he honed his ability to tell stories, characterizing himself as an Ancient Mariner style figure, telling the same classic tales - the Greek myths, The Odyssey and The Iliad - to his pupils year after year. Far from being repetitive though, this experience was crucial in helping him to learn what kind of a storyteller he was: 'Time spent telling a great story is never time wasted.'

The figure of the storyteller is clearly central to Pullman's vision of writing and himself as a writer. Moving on to a discussion of some of his best known works, he teasingly warned the audience: 'I tell stories about telling stories … they're not always true.' His Sally Lockhart series, which Kemp compared to the work of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, in fact first originated as a play. Pullman suggested that the success of this series is partly due to their appeal to both adults and children equally - he actively dislikes the kind of writing that 'winks over the child's head at the adult'. He expressed some disappointment, however, with the BBC television programmes based on the books, particularly as he feels that television is in many ways the ideal medium for the Sally Lockhart books.

Northern Lights began over a lunch with his publisher ('we had sausage and mash') in which he first began exploring the idea of reinterpreting Milton's Paradise Lost. He quickly realized the book would need to be a fantasy, but not being a fan of Tolkinesque 'elves and swords', he was determined to root it firmly in the 'real world', following in the tradition of authors such as Alan Garner. Part of the thinking behind the books was also to explore Oxford as a city, which Pullman characterised as a 'ridiculous place' full of arcane traditions. His aim was to take the Oxford that exists, and 'give it a twist' without straying too far away from the real and recognisable.

The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ is Pullman's latest book and perhaps his most controversial, reimagining the gospel stories with a very significant difference - Jesus Christ here becomes two separate characters, the twin brothers Jesus and Christ. Pullman explained that the book was inspired by his reading of the gospels (and the apocryphal gospels), themselves a series of stories. The book as a whole can be read as a parable for the nature of writing and storytelling, with Christ imaginatively reinventing Jesus's stories 'to make them sound better', creating an interesting parallel with Pullman's own act of rewriting. Given the chance to ask questions, the audience were keen to talk about the response of the US religious right to Pullman's work, and his highly critical view of organised religion. 'I'm conscious there may be some people who disagree with what I'm writing, but that's tough,' was his robust response. 'That's the price you pay for freedom of speech'.

Other questions focused on Pullman's writing process. Ever the storyteller, he revealed that 'the weight, texture, sound and rhythm of language' are of particular importance to him, and he regularly tries to 'voice' his writing to check how it sounds aloud. He used to write in a garden shed, but passed this on to another writer, and now works indoors, always using the same type of paper and pen to write drafts by hand, followed by editing on the computer. 'I never write first drafts,' he noted to the amusement of the audience. 'I just write the final draft fifteen times.'

You can listen again to the event on the Southbank Centre website.