Today’s Western Mail features additional quotes from Philip Pullman on the renewed controversy this week over the watering-down of His Dark Materials’ religious elements for the first film of the trilogy, The Golden Compass. The author has been a consistent backer of the movie adaptation and told the paper, “This must be the only film attacked in the same week for being too religious and for being anti-religious – and by people who haven’t seen it. All these stories have been generally mischievous and they have all been written without knowledge of what the film is like. As far as I know, these people have not seen the script or shots of the film. Why not wait and see.”

Pullman added, “I’ve been kept informed with what’s going on – I have very friendly and happy relations with the film-makers and I’m very happy with what they are doing. It’s a very complicated special effects film so it’s taking a very long time to get right. The last I heard, they were recording the music with a very big orchestra in London.”