Pullman's Gnosticism

Philip Pu$llman hasn't always
been the atheist he is today,
says Laura Barton in The
Guardian. In his 20s, the writer
flirted with Gnosticism - the
idea that the cosmos was
created by an evil god to trap
humanity in a world of
suffering. **I read a lot of stuff
about it and tried to feel the
sort of angst appropriate to
someone who's a prisoner of a
material world. But 1 don't do
angst very well. As the man
who wanted to be a phil-
osopher said to Dr Johnson,
'Cheerfulness keeps breaking
through.' And so I came to
realise that this world was
rather a good place, which is
full of things that make you
laugh and make you
happy, and things that
make you feel good
physically, and so
gradually I abandoned


the idea of the evil
demiurges who had
created this ghastly
world, and realised
that actually this is
our home, it's where
we belong, and there
ain't nowhere else."


Mandy Smith has undergone quite a transformation, says Jenny
Johnston in the Daily Mail. Back in the 1980s, she was London's
original wild child - photographed falling out of nightclubs and
hanging off the arms of rock stars. Today, aged nearly 40, she is a
devout Catholic who spends her spare time not partying, but
working with young people in Manchester. She is, she says,
frequently shocked by the sexualisation of the girls she meets ("I try
to say to them: 'Hold on, you don't have to do this'"), and reckons
the age of consent should be raised to 18. "It's not about being
physically mature," she says. "It's emotional maturity that matters.
I don't think most 16-year-old girls are ready. I know, I know, people
will find that odd, coming from me. But I think I do know what I'm
talking about." Mandy (pictured above, aged 16} was 14 when she
lost her virginity, to Rolling Stone Bill Wyman. Their relationship
had begun when she was 13, and they married when she was 18.
He was 52 by then. She's not sure if he "groomed" her, but she
bitterly regrets the affair - and believes what he did was wrong. "If
it happened today, he would be vilified by the press. He'd be in jail.
For me, for a long time, it was a grey area: I was underage, but
I was complicit. Now I see it in black and white. I work with
teenagers. I see how vulnerable they are under all that bravado."