Cultural Life: Philip Pullman, author

Visual Arts

Visited Liverpool's Walker Art Gallery on Saturday, and was impressed, as I always am, by the storytelling skill of the Victorian narrative painters. Yeames's 'And when did you last see your father?' is composed and characterised brilliantly – and yet the narrative movement led nowhere.

Television

Like many people, I'm discovering how good 'The Wire' is. The possibility of something this rich was there from the first moments of television, but no one thought of it before now. Technical possibilities often exist for years before their full potential is realised.

Music

I switched on Radio 3 to find myself listening to something charming and not like anything I'd ever heard: obviously 20th century, a chorus singing English words, but with a French lightness and sexiness. What on earth was it? It turned out to be by Lord Berners. Well, well.

Books

Thomas Mann gets better the more I read by him: I'm currently relishing his 'Doctor Faustus'. And reading it in the handsome Everyman edition, not the densely printed Penguin, helps no end.

Philip Pullman talks about Manet's 'A Bar at the Folies-Bergère' on 20 November, the first in the series of Picture This at Somerset House: Writers' Talks in The Courtauld Gallery, London WC2 (0844 847 2317)