Via Lindsey, I see that Christianity Today has an interesting interview with Philip Pullman; the extended interview is at Peter Chattaway’s blog here. Well worth reading. My favourite quote is the same as Lindsey’s (no doubt because I can identify with it pretty well, and it helps explain why I liked HDM so much; though my atheism is more of the low-CofE-veering-on-Methodism kind):

My answer to that would be that I was brought up in the Church of England, and whereas I’m an atheist, I’m certainly a Church of England atheist, and for the matter of that a 1662 Book of Common Prayer atheist. The Church of England is so deeply embedded in my personality and my way of thinking that to remove it would take a surgical operation so radical that I would probably not survive it.