Pullman was born in Norwich, Norfolk, England, to RAF pilot Alfred Outram and Audrey Evelyn Merrifield. The family travelled with his father's job, including to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where he spent time at school. His father was killed in a plane crash in 1953 when Pullman was seven. His mother remarried and with a move to Australia came Pullman's discovery of comic books including Superman and Batman, a medium which he continues to espouse. From 1957 he was educated at Ysgol Ardudwy school in Harlech, Gwynedd and spent time in Norfolk with his grandfather, a clergyman. Around this time Pullman discovered John Milton's Paradise Lost, which would become a major influence for His Dark Materials. From 1963 Pullman attended Exeter College, Oxford, receiving a Third class BA in 1968, in an interview with the Oxford Student he stated that "he did not really enjoy the English course" and that "I thought I was doing quite well until I came out with my third class degree and then I realised that I wasn’t — it was the year they stopped giving fourth class degrees otherwise I’d have got one of those". He discovered William Blake's illustrations around 1970, which would also later influence him greatly Pullman married Judith Speller in 1970 and began teaching children and writing school plays. His first published work was The Haunted Storm, which joint-won the New English Library's Young Writer's Award in 1972. He nevertheless refuses to discuss it. Galatea, an adult fantasy-fiction novel, followed in 1978, but it was his school plays which inspired his first children's book, Count Karlstein, in 1982. He stopped teaching around the publication of The Ruby in the Smoke (1986), his second children's book, whose Victorian setting is indicative of Pullman's interest in that era. Pullman taught part-time at Westminster College, Oxford between 1988 and 1996, continuing to write children's stories. He began His Dark Materials about 1993. Northern Lights (published as The Golden Compass in the US) was published in 1996 and won the Carnegie Medal, one of the most prestigious British children's fiction awards, and the Guardian Children's Fiction Award. Pullman has been writing full-time since 1996, but continues to deliver talks and writes occasionally for The Guardian. He was awarded a CBE in the New Year's Honours list in 2004. Pullman also began lecturing at a seminar in English at his alma mater, Exeter College, Oxford, in 2004. He is currently working on The Book of Dust, a sequel to his completed His Dark Materials trilogy.

Michael Bond, OBE, (born January 13, 1926 in Newbury, Berkshire) is an English children's author. He is the creator of Paddington Bear and has written about the adventures of a guinea pig named Olga da Polga, as well as the animated BBC TV series The Herbs. Bond also writes culinary mystery stories for adults featuring Monsieur Pamplemousse and his faithful bloodhound, Pommes Frites. Bond was educated at Presentation College, a Catholic school in Reading. During World War II he served in both the Royal Air Force and the Middlesex Regiment of the British Army. He began writing in 1945 and sold his first short story to a magazine London Opinion. In 1958, after producing a number of plays and short stories and while working as a BBC television cameraman (where he worked filming Blue Peter for a time) his first book A Bear Called Paddington was published. By 1967 he was able to give up his BBC job to work full-time as a writer. Paddington's adventures have been published in nearly twenty countries. He is married with two adult children and lives in London, not far from Paddington Station. The small bear he created has inspired pop bands, race horses, plays, hot air balloons and a TV series. In 1997 Bond was awarded the OBE for services to children's literature. On 6th July 2007 the University of Reading awarded him an Honorary Doctor of Letters. Michael Bond's most famous books by far are the Paddington series, detailing the adventures of a bear from Darkest Peru whose Aunt Lucy sends him to England, carrying a jar of marmalade. He was found at Paddington Station by the Brown family who named and adopted him.