Philip Pullman is to be given the Freedom of Oxford in a ceremony at the Town Hall on Wednesday 24th January 2007. 

The Lord Mayor, Councillor Jim Campbell says: "Oxford has an astonishingly rich tradition of children's story telling, and Philip Pullman is a worthy successor to Lewis Carroll and C S Lewis. He went on to say " His Dark Materials is one of the finest imaginative works in English. While it creates and explores new worlds and new systems, its roots are in Oxford and we are pleased to be able to confer the freedom of the city on someone who has given so much enjoyment to children, and adults, all over the world."

Oxford has been the inspiration for much of Philip's work, He says, "Oxford is a city that's steeped in storytelling. It's a place where the past and the present jostle each other on the pavement, and while of course that's true of many cities in Britain, Oxford does seem to have a few extra dimensions in some strange way."