Several events at this year’s Times Oxford Literary Festival will feature or reference Philip Pullman:

The Lyra’s Oxford walk, on April 1st at 2pm, is “a walk of under two miles, broadly based on Oxford author Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights and Lyra’s Oxford, but citing many other authors. The route will include the literary-rich Victorian suburb of Jericho and the Oxford Canal (complementing the Inspector Morse Tour), and finish at Oxford Castle. The tour will begin at Oxford University Press, Walton Street, Jericho, and will be led by local historian, author, and publisher, Mark Davies, an Oxford ‘gyptian’ himself.”

On April 2nd at 12pm, Newman Rooms, St. Aldates will be host to Writing for a Change – Responses to Climate Change. Various guests including Pullman will discuss why the artistic and particularly the written response to climate change has been so muted, and whether a new self-awareness is going to be motivated more by fiction than by the writing of activists – or is this not the role of the writer?

Finally, on April 5th at 2.30, the Sheldonian Theatre will play host to the final of Off By Heart, the BBC’s new poetry reciting competition. Pullman will sit on the panel of judges that determines the winner from the 12 best (of over 1,000) entrants.