It was 1993 when I thought of Lyra and began writing His Dark Materials. John Major was prime minister, the UK was still in the EU, there was no Facebook or Twitter or Google, and although I had a computer and could word-process on it, I didn’t have email. No one I knew had email, so I wouldn’t have been able to use it anyway. If I wanted to look something up I went to the library; if I wanted to buy a book I went to a bookshop. There were only four terrestrial TV channels, and if you forgot to record a programme you’d wanted to watch, tough luck. Smart phones and iPads and text messaging had never been heard of. The announcers on Radio 3 had not yet started trying to be our warm and chatty friends. The BBC and the National Health Service were as much part of our identity, of our idea of ourselves as a nation, as Stonehenge.
Twenty-seven years later I’m still writing about Lyra, and meanwhile the world has been utterly transformed.
In telling those stories, I’ve gained a sense of what works for my daughter (princesses, witches, magic) and what doesn’t (stories with an obvious moral). I’m by no means a master — more than once, I’ve dozed off mid-sentence. And yet, I’ve learned some useful lessons along the way.
Among certain culturally influential citizens, esteem for the mainstream press has risen to the point where they consider publications and reporters part of the #Resistance — which they are not, and which risks obscuring the values that might secure their sustainable future.
Two new books are likely to help mitigate these threats and inspire budding journalists to join their school newspapers, as did the movies “All the President’s Men” and “The Paper.” More valuably, though, both are designed to train future non-journalists to consume the news avidly, responsibly and without fear or favor.
Jay, Jay, plant me an acorn.
I will plant you a thousand acorns.