'You Don't Know How Famous You Are Until Complete Strangers Stop You In The Street To Talk'

What was your involvement in the staging of His Dark Materials and what do you think of the end results? They invited me to come and look in on rehearsals and I've seen every stage of the script development. It's been a joy to be on the edges. And when I finally saw it in the stage I was absolutely thrilled. I never thought it could be staged. It was [National Theatre director] Nicholas Hytner who read the books and decided he wanted the stage rights ... he's a great director and the National is the only place with the technical resources to do it.
Nicholas Wright [who adapted the books] had to conceive of it very differently. For the stage it has to be metaphorical rather than literal. In cinema, with CGI, you can have a snake coming out of your sleeve and turning into a moth and flying around your head and talking to you; you can have what look like real polar bears wearing armor — that's easy. On the stage you have to rely on theatrical conventions and on the audience making a leap of imagination to join you — and the result of that is very intense if it comes off. But the most important part is the story. And thanks to Nicholas Wright, the integrity and the line of the story are very strong.

Does it bother you what other people do with your work or ideas? I would, if the condition of its being adapted was that all the books had to be withdrawn from print. But the books are going to still to be there. And anyway, once a story leaves your desk it goes into the hands of the reader — they see things in it that you didn't think were there. So once you've published a book, you've lost control of it, and if you want to fret about that then don't publish it. But to do something major with it, the main thing was to make sure it got into the best hands. I couldn't think of any better hands than Nicholas Hytner and the National Theatre and the film company working on it [New Line Cinema, which produced Lord of the Rings]. They know how to make a big story in three parts, if anybody does. So I'm very confident.

How advanced are plans to film His Dark Materials? There's a script for the first film which Tom Stoppard has finished and they're about to appoint a director. I hope it will be someone who will take the story seriously and not be intoxicated by all the opportunities for lots of action. At the center of the story is a very simple thing: a girl and a boy growing up ,who realize they love each other.

Are you an admirer of Tolkien? Lord of the Rings is a very well told story — my criticism of Tolkien is that the story he tells is not that interesting because it leaves out at least half of human life, namely the sexual element. They've had to beef up the love themes [in the film] as an excuse to have any women in it all. Otherwise it would just be public school chaps and oiks (or Orcs!) fighting. So I don't learn anything from Tolkien about being a human being and that's what's most interesting in a story.

As well as the play, your trilogy was just voted third on the BBC's Big Read poll of Britain's favorite books. Are you enjoying your celebrity? To be honest, no. It's a curious thing: you don't know how famous you are until complete strangers stop you in the street to talk. As for the Big Read, would I rather have it than not? Yes. Am I willing to make myself available to take part in all these shindigs? I suppose. But my job is to write books and anything else is a gift of my time, and I give it parsimoniously. And it's very hard to find the time to write, so I'm putting a stop to it. The interviews I'm doing now will be the last for a very long time to come

His Dark Materials has provoked a great variety of responses and analyses. Do you feel misunderstood? It goes back to this business of loss of control. The last thing I want to say is you've got it wrong. Because then you enter a kind of fundamentalist mode where you're saying you've got to understand it this way, not that way ... that's dreadful. People are at perfect liberty to find in my story whatever they want to find and I wouldn't dream of saying to someone they've got it wrong. I'm just very flattered and happy that lots of people are reading my books.