14 JANUARY 2006, Page 20

Misplaced generosity

From Philip Pullman

Sir: David Watkins (Letters, 7 January) invents an opinion that C.S. Lewis might have held about my books, if he’d been able to read them, and then chastises me for not being a little generous to Lewis in return. This is an odd manoeuvre, as well as an inaccurate one. As a matter of fact I’ve always spoken generously about Lewis’s critical work: ‘[Pullman] likes Lewis’s criticism and quotes it surprisingly often’ (The New Yorker, 26 December 2005). What I don’t like is his fiction, and why on earth shouldn’t I say so? Tolkien didn’t like the Narnia books either: why doesn’t Mr Watkins tell him off for not being ‘a little generous’?

Philip Pullman Cumnor, Oxford