HE HAS been hailed by many critics as the best children’s author since J. R. Tolkien, who created the magnificent Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Yet Philip Pullman — whose own His Dark Materials trilogy is to be made into a Hollywood film by the same company that turned Tolkien’s masterpiece into the most decorated film in the history of the Academy Awards — has a surprise for his fans. He does not rate Tolkien Pullman is quietly confident that this own film will be a critical success in the hands of New Line Cinema. But In conversation with Jeanette Winterson, the author of Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, he was dismissive of Tolkien.

“The Lord of the Rings is not a serious book because it does not say anything interesting, or new, or truthful about the human condition,” he told Winterson in an interview in the December issue of Harpers & Queen.

The former teacher, who wrote his bestselling books in a shed in the back garden of his Oxford home, now works from a study in a big and expensive new house that is a far cry from his days in the classroom.

Although the film will bring even more riches to Pullman, his days of penury as a teacher are never far away. His wife Jude, who fed the family on sardines and beans while her husband was a struggling young author, has kept the letter from the bank manager refusing an overdraft.

“She kept her reply assuring the bank manager that one day her husband would be a famous author.”

When asked if he knew about his wife having such belief in him, Pullman said: “I didn’t, she did. I just knew that there was something I had to do.”

Plumping for a rounder Renée

WHILE Renée Zellweger has won admiration for her ability promptly to lose the two stones she gained to reprise the role of Bridget Jones, Colin Firth, her on-screen boyfriend, is less impressed.

“I preferred the fuller-figured Renée; despite women’s beliefs to the contrary, men are more partial to women of substance,” he said at the film’s premiere.

“If a man is forced to change his appearance — by growing his hair, a moustache, gaining or losing a couple of pounds — nothing is made of it. When it’s a woman and her weight, then it becomes an international matter of discussion.”

• TOM WOLFE, 73, has unveiled a racy novel, I am Charlotte Simmons, which dwells on the sexual debauchery of US university students and involved him loitering around dormitories until 5am observing youthful shenanigans. An optimistic fellow, he sighs: “Seventy-five is not as bad as you might think. I gather it’s a lot better than being 80.”

  PS...

• Leading 30 expeditions in some of the planet’s most extreme conditions teaches you a thing or two about people. Sir Ranulph Fiennes, 60, advises: “If it’s going to be a long expedition, don’t take very small people because they probably have big egos and can be over-sensitive.”

  E-mail: people@thetimes.co.uk

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