La Belle Sauvage: Eleven-year-old Malcolm Polstead, and his daemon Asta, find their life altered forever by the arrival of a mysterious guest at Godstow Priory across the river.

The Book of Dust, Part One: La Belle Sauvage

Twenty two years after the publication of Philip Pullman's NORTHERN LIGHTS, the author returns to the world of HIS DARK MATERIALS with a brand new trilogy.

LA BELLE SAUVAGE, read by Simon Russell Beale, is the first volume of THE BOOK OF DUST. Set ten years before the events of HIS DARK MATERIALS, this novel explores the origins of that story.

We open in Oxford, at The Trout Inn, with a pot boy named Malcolm Polstead, and the whisper of a mysterious baby girl, hidden at the local convent, in the care of the nuns...

For this highly anticipated novel, Radio 4 has cleared the Saturday afternoon schedule on 21st October for a special omnibus edition, featuring extra material, to be followed by a Book at Bedtime broadcast on weekdays from Monday 23 October - Friday 3 November.