Hello! I’m back from my weekend away at home. I had a nice time – it was good to see everyone again, in particular Uncle Bernie and Cousin Ben who were visiting. Uncle Bernie now lives in Australia, so I don’t see him very often!

One of the interesting things I discovered while researching for my profile of Philip Pullman for the books section of Quench was that the story that The Catholic Herald claimed that his books are good for “nothing but burning” is in fact a myth. The original article, The Stuff of Nightmares, made the comment in defence of Harry Potter “if one was going to start banning books, there are numerous candidates that seem to me to be far more worthy of the bonfire than Harry” before discussing His Dark Materials. In a press pack about The Amber Spyglass, comments from the article were taken out of context giving a distorted view of the opinions expressed. And ever since, the story that this paper advocated the burning of Pullman’s books has been circulated, not least by Philip Pullman himself, who seems delighted to have a renounciation from the church to seize on as evidence of its evil. A further article, Paradise Denied, by the writer of the original piece describes what happened.

I was about to trot out this factoid in my article, but I checked up on it first by looking for the original article, unlike many journalists to judge from the number of articles that repeat this myth. It just shows the importance of a bit of research, a quick search for the truth, doesn’t it?