The third and final series of the BBC/HBO adaptation of Philip Pullman’s trilogy His Dark Materials is due to air some time in 2022. If you’re a fan of the screen version you’ll be familiar with Scottish composer Lorne Balfe’s striking title music, especially its distinctive ‘Scotch snap’ in the opening theme (perhaps an echo of the rhythm in the name Lyra Silvertongue).
The middle section of the credits sequence includes a sung chorus, the largely indistinguishable words later confirmed in a tweet by the composer as being in Latin. The mystical-sounding words have since been translated in various ways but I favour an interpretation which whispers about Dust, about great cycles of Time, and about the part to be played by seemingly insignificant individuals.
But the murmurings and whispers also convey to me the promise of the third and final volume of Pullman’s The Book of Dust, the title of which we don’t yet know (the author has reportedly suggested The Garden of Roses or Roses from the South as possibilities) and which this summer he was still in the middle of writing. Still, I’m going to speculate a little on what it might contain, so expect several spoilers in this rather meandering post.
Continue reading “Whispers of Dust”
Calmgrove 