The Vatican on Wednesday condemned the film "The Golden Compass," which some have called anti-Christian, saying it promotes a cold and hopeless world without God. In a long editorial, the Vatican newspaper l'Osservatore Romano, also slammed Philip Pullman, the bestselling author of the book on which the family fantasy movie is based.

It was the Vatican's most stinging broadside against an author and a film since it roundly condemned "The Da Vinci Code" in 2005 and 2006. "In Pullman's world, hope simply does not exist, because there is no salvation but only personal, individualistic capacity to control the situation and dominate events," the editorial said.

The film, which premiered earlier this month in the United States and stars Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, is an adaptation of Pullman's acclaimed novel "Northern Lights." The Vatican newspaper said "honest" viewers would find it "devoid of any particular emotion apart from a great chill."

Is he expecting controversy? He pauses: "I am beset, not beset, that's too strong, I am attended by crazy people." The day before our interview he had given a reading at the Sheldonian Theatre as part of the Oxford Chamber Music Festival. There were 750 children from primary schools in the Oxford area listening to music and readings. A small boy from one of the schools was taken out "rather ostentatiously" before each of Pullman's readings and brought back in again when the reading was over. "Apparently his parents objected to his hearing anything of mine on the grounds that he might go to hell if he did."

Pullman says that people who are tempted to take offence should first see the film or read the books. "They'll find a story that attacks such things as cruelty, oppression, intolerance, unkindness, narrow-mindedness, and celebrates love, kindness, open-mindedness, tolerance, curiosity, human intelligence. It's very hard to disagree with those. But people will."

How will he respond to those attacks? "A soft answer turneth away wrath, as it says in my favourite book." (Proverbs 15:1.) So he won't argue back? "It's a foolish thing for the teller of a story to answer critics. If you're putting forward an argument, you can argue back and demonstrate why your argument is better than theirs. But if someone doesn't like a story you've written, what are you going to say? 'Well, you should'?"

Philip Pullman, who was educated at Ysgol Ardudwy in Harlech, is already an honorary fellow of the university. The writer will take seminars for Bangor students and host discussions on literature and narrative structures. He said he was "delighted" to accept the role because he associated north Wales with his first real writing.

"It's not too much to say that my awakening to the pleasures and responsibilities of literature took place in Miss Enid Jones' English class at Ysgol Ardudwy in Harlech," he said. Speaking to BBC Wales last year, Pullman said he was "intoxicated" by the landscape of the region as he was growing up.

"I wanted to be a painter when I was a teenager and I spent a lot of time drawing and learning to look at things." Pullman's appointment in the arts and humanities department follows careers as a teacher and a teacher trainer. He has written more than 30 books altogether with his most famous works being the best-selling His Dark Materials trilogy. The last book in the trilogy, The Amber Spyglass was the first children's novel to win the Whitbread Book of the Year award in 2002.