As a child, I cavorted in Oxford colleges, rode atop armoured bears and swanned off to Svalbard to witness the majesty of the northern lights - all while remaining within the walls of an Edwardian terrace in Cardiff.
No, I wasn't a fantasist. Or, at least, the fantasy wasn't mine alone. The escapades were thanks to my compulsive reading of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials. The first book in the His Dark Materials trilogy was published in 1995, when I was four, so it was a few years after it came out that I fell for Pullman's writing. But when I finally did ... boy, did I fall hard. I zoned out of sleepovers with friends, family dinners, and - on one occasion - my brother's wedding as I joined Pullman's heroine, Lyra, on thrilling Arctic voyages and skirmishes in parallel universes.
