Philip Pullman rounds on headmistress

Philip Pullman, the best-selling author of the trilogy His Dark Materials, has rounded on the headmistress of a comprehensive school in Chesterfield. Her crime? Closing down the library. In a private letter leaked to the Observer, Pullman (pictured) warns the headmistress, Lynn Asquith, that if she proceeds with her plans to close the library at her 759-pupil Meadows Community School her name will become "a byword for ignorance".

He wrote: "Are you going to relegate the whole activity of reading fiction to the status of a trivial and innocuous activity, like stamp collecting or playing with a frisbee? A library with a dedicated and professional staff should be at the very heart of any institution dedicated to learning.”

Pullman said he was alerted to the Meadows school issue by an organisation called the Campaign for the Book. However, Asquith is unimpressed by his intervention, saying that the closure of the library will enable the creation of "a new learning resource centre for the benefit of all".