His dark materials

Book excerpt: Philip Pullman's classic trilogy is now available as a stunning bind-up edition. Since the first volume was published in 1995, and has now been filmed as The Golden Compass, the trilogy has been acclaimed as a modern masterpiece, and has won the UK's top awards for children's literature. Today, the fabulous story of Lyra and her daemon is read and loved by adults and children alike. The extraordinary story moves between parallel universes. Beginning in Oxford, it takes Lyra and her animal-daemon Pantalaimon on a dangerous rescue mission to the ice kingdoms of the far North, where she begins to learn about the mysterious particles they call Dust - a substance for which a terrible war between different worlds will be fought... "This trilogy is one of the great imaginative works in the English language. And it contains one of the best villains in all literature." - Terry Jones Philip Pullman has won the CILIP Carnegie Medal, the Guardian Children's Fiction Award, the Children's Book of the Year - British Book Awards, the Whitbread Book of the Year, the Eleanor Farjeon Award and the Astrid Lindgren Award.