- The His Dark Materials author slammed authors like Milne, Nesbit and Grahame
- Fantasy author, 70, said he ‘couldn’t stand’ the creator of Winnie The Pooh
- He slammed the novelists for failing to show adolesence as prep for adulthood
Novelist Philip Pullman has criticised the creator of Winnie-the-Pooh for peddling ‘sickly nostalgia’ for childhood.
The author of the acclaimed fantasy trilogy, His Dark Materials, said he ‘cannot stand’ AA Milne and criticised what he sees as static childhoods portrayed in some of the most popular classics in children’s literature.
The 70-year-old said: ‘It always struck me as blasphemous on the part of the children’s writers of the so-called golden age, this sickly nostalgia that you see in AA Milne, E Nesbit [The Railway Children, 1906] Kenneth Grahame [Wind in the Willows, 1908], that squad’. He added: ‘Milne – I can’t stand the man.’
Novelist Phillip Pullman (pictured) has criticised the creator of Winnie-the-Pooh AA Milne for ‘sickly nostalgia of childhood’
The 70-year-old slammed Milne (pictured) for not portraying adolescence as preparation for adulthood
He also argued that some children’s literature fail to portray adolescence as a preparation for adulthood.
Speaking to the Sunday Times Magazine about looking at cartoons from Punch magazine from the late 19th and early 20th century, he said: ‘A lot of them are pictures of young children, sometimes in a state of undress – in the bath or something -saying something teeth-grittingly cute with a fond parent or nanny looking.
‘It’s not paedophilia, not lustful gloating over the glistening limbs, but there is a sense of ‘Let’s go back to the nursery. Let’s take nanny and tea and teddy bears’ and all that stuff. Only adults feel like that. Children want to grow up.’
As well as the Winnie-the-Pooh author, he also slammed Kenneth Grahame and E Nesbit