Philip Pullman's award-winning trilogy His Dark Materials had everything Nicholas Hytner, the new director of the National Theatre, could want for a modern audience, but for one thing: it was almost impossible to stage. Robert Butler's intimate backstage account takes us into the meetings, workshops and rehearsals where, over six months, Pullman's 1300-page novel-about daemons, armored bears and parallel universes-was transformed into six hours of drama.