Portsmouth Cathedral Institute hosts a series of talks on six books that got people talking. Join speakers at the Cathedral for a short presentation followed by an informal discussion.
Free
Lecture by The Very Revd Dr Anthony Cane
His Dark Materials is an award winning trilogy of fantasy novels by Philip Pullman (who has described himself as a ‘Book of Common Prayer atheist’) published between 1995 and 2000. It has been adapted for the stage, cinema and television, and follows the coming of age of two children, Lyra Belacqua and Will Parry, as they wander through a series of parallel universes. Widely read by both young people and adults, the books incorporate sophisticated concepts from physics, philosophy and theology - and have attracted criticism for their unsympathetic portrayal of religion, the church, and indeed God (who dies in the final book!). Pullman has consciously written an anti-Narnia narrative - he dislikes C.S. Lewis intensely - with roots in a reading of Milton’s Paradise Lost where Satan is understood as the hero, and ‘original sin’ is a positive good.
