I love it when you stumble on greatness unexpectedly and so it was with Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. The first book Northern Lights was bought for me (probably by Aunty Jean or my mum) and I remember loving it from the off, and the fact that we then had to wait, like properly wait, for the second and third installations, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass, was an exquisite kind of torture, the best kind of anticipation and one that I haven’t really had with a book since. Investigating the rest of his canon made me a genuine fan and so I’ve kept a keen eye on adaptations of his work.
This weekend sees me revisiting the ill-fated film adaptation of Northern Lights, The Golden Compass and the two Sally Lockhart mysteries that were on the BBC a few years back – The Ruby in the Smoke and The Shadow in the North.
