Oxford author Philip Pullman was the star attraction on Monday night, as the 2008 Oxford Literary Festival got under way. Pullman was appearing before a sell-out crowd at the Town Hall, in an event devoted to his latest book Once Upon a Time in the North.

Radio 4 broadcaster James Naughtie, the genial host of the evening, described the novel in his introduction as "a sort of prequel" to Pullman's acclaimed His Dark Materials trilogy. The story traces the early friendship between two characters from those books, balloonist Lee Scoresby and armoured bear Iorek Byrnison, and how they get involved in what Pullman calls "a dirty election".

The night started with a brief but evocative reading from the new work by the author. Pullman is an accomplished performer, and he skilfully transported the audience to a fictional frontier town, Novy Odense, somewhere in the frozen North. The author then explained some special extras such as a board game were included in this book: "Putting these extra bits in, these little bits of fake ephemera is one of the most enjoyable parts of it."

Naughtie then led an entertaining discussion with the author about the new novel. He suggested that the "cult of the western" seemed to have been a major influence. Pullman said that he was interested in cowboy movies and that he had borrowed the title and even parts of the plot from westerns."This is not a Western it's a Northern, " he said. "I won't give away too much if I tell you that I stole most of the basic incident from The Magnificent Seven."

Responding at the end of the night to questions from the audience, Pullman explained he was generally happy with the recent movie The Golden Compass, despite suggestions the film had been disappointing."I was very happy with Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig and particularly with little Dakota Blue Richards . . . however when you put a novel that long into something which is two hours long, I mean it takes 11 hours to read the novel aloud, for example, so you are going to lose an enormous amount."