What the Fool says (5)

Philip Pullman clearly sees himself as the atheist's answer to C.S. Lewis and his mission to oppose in Lewis' Narnia books what he dubbed 'one of the most vile moments in the whole of children's literature.' Now this little remark would probably be enough to raise the suspicion that Pullman is a ha'penny short of a shilling but a recent reply he made to an audience in Oxford when asked about the offensive nature of the title of his latest book, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ suggests all this celebrity atheist attention has really gone to his head:

"Yes it was a shocking thing to say and I knew it was a shocking thing to say. But no one has the right to live without being shocked. No one has the right to spend their life without being offended. Nobody has to read this book. Nobody has to pick it up. Nobody has to open it. And if you open it and read it, you don't have to like it. And if you read it and you dislike it, you don't have to remain silent about it. You can write to me, you can complain about it, you can write to the publisher, you can write to the papers, you can write your own book. You can do all those things, but there your rights stop. No one has the right to stop me writing this book. No one has the right to stop it being published, or bought, or sold or read. That's all I have to say on that subject."