Philip Pullman was born October 19,1946, in Norwich, Norfolk, England. The son of Alfred Outram and Audrey Evelyn (Merrifield), he has one brother. Before age eleven, he traveled extensively with his family. "A lot of my life before I was ten was spent on board a ship. My father and then my stepfather were both in the Royal Air Force, and my mother and my brother and I seemed to constantly following them around the world by sea." His journeys included trips to South Africa and Australia, through the Suez Canal, Bombay, Aden, Columbo, and Las Palmas. He attended schools in Southern Rhodesia, South Australia, and England until age eleven.

Then, when the family returned to England, he was educated at Ysgol Ardudwy, Harlech, in North Wales. These many exotic locations appear in some form, especially in The Golden Compass, but also in his "Sally...