♪ welcome to this edition of "amanpour" on pbs. tonight the authors. their stories and their pictures. bringing us from conflict-torn regions of our own world to filling our imaginations with imaginary worlds. to the good old bedtime stories full of kindness and love. ♪ >> announcer: "amanpour" on pbs was made possible with the generous support of rosalind p. walter. good evening, everyone, and welcome to the program.

i'm christiane amanpour in london with the world view. and we begin with an image that's haunted us for more than three decades and the photographer who captured it for the world. it's one of the most memorable magazine covers in history. "national geographic's" june 1985 issue known simply as "the afghan girl." those fierce green eyes mesmerized the world but into whose lens was she looking? it was renowned photographer steve mckury. i spoke with him on the publication of his new book "afghanistan," named for the country he holds so close to his heart. >> this is the book. steve mccurry, welcome. we've moved over to our window onto the world and into your images. so let me first ask you you're so famous for that one picture and we'll get to it. but what drew you to afghanistan in the first place? >> i was a young freelance photographer i started my career in india. i thought this would be an interesting place to start. and after about a year of

looking around for stories and pictures i wandered into pakistan up in the mountains. i was just going to look at some of the interesting tribes in the hindu kush. and i met two afghan refugees at the hotel who told me about this war that was raging literally over the next mountain. and they said the story's undone, nobody knows about it in the world, we want you to come in and tell our story. we crossed the border illegally, without a passport. and i had never worked in a conflict zone. so this was completely new to me. >> today, in 2017, it is america's longest war. but let's go back to when you were there during the war. this was one of the images. of course that was taken in 2013. but it really does show how long this place has been at war. look at that. >> yeah. and the resilience and the fortitude that these people have

that they can be beaten down, they can be crushed, and yet they still find the energy to be able to open up a small shop selling oranges in the middle of winter. this was literally in december, and he's out there trying to -- >> i love the way you say a small shop. it's actually the top of the trunk of that blown-out car. >> yeah. >> i'm really struck by something that you said about your style of photography. if you wait, people will forget your camera and the soul will drift up into view. it's a beautiful way of putting it. >> well, for me i want to get to know the people. i want them to relax. i want to have them kind of just be natural and to spend enough time with somebody so that they become very comfortable with the camera and eventually their personality comes out and you can make wonderful pictures just

by literally observation and curiosity. >> when did you take this one? >> this was in 2004. this was an old army barracks. this had been the mosque. it was painted green. and they converted it to a classroom. and i love that one boy's expression looking kind of very eagerly at the blackboard trying to figure out what's going on. >> i just think it's phenomenal. let's now get to the piece de resistance, which you took two decades before that photo. and this is, as we said, the afghan girl with the fierce green eyes. and we are showing it with another picture. of course that is her so many decades later. you went to find her. what were you thinking when you took that picture? >> i walked into the tent, and off on the side was this sharbat gula, this little afghan girl, and i saw the whole class. like a laser i focused on her because she had this incredible look, these really intense blue-green eyes. and suddenly sort of everything

melted away and i thought, okay, whatever i do here in this classroom this morning i have to make a portrait of her. so she sat in front of my lens. i made five or ten pictures. and i could just -- i was just hoping this picture was sharp and in focus. and then i was kind of in the middle of this portrait session and she got up and walked away. i thought, wait a minute, that's not how it's supposed to work. so -- but that was over. >> and you got the shot. >> i got the shot. i didn't see the picture until about two months. it was back in the time of film. i went back, started selecting pictures, and i saw that picture, and i thought, wow, that's something special. >> did it change your life? >> not only changed my life till today, but it changed her life. i promise you not a day goes by that there's not a request, an

e-mail, something that harkens back to that picture. books, magazines, exhibitions. it's really become incredible. >> the word iconic is thrown around a lot, but that really is. perhaps also huh fouwhen you fo again that also says everything. she's an old haggard woman who looks so disappointed with life. >> yeah. but the good news was that she was alive because i was sure that we would never find her in a million years. she was living in a very small village in nangarhar, which is now controlled by isis, taliban. we compensated her for the picture. suddenly we bought her a home under her name, which is really unheard of in that part of the world. and she was suddenly -- was living in peshawar and her life was now -- she was being provided for. >> as we scroll through some of these, just such beautiful pictures of this amazingly

beautiful country. what are you trying to do with this book, apart from collecting and compiling the best pictures? >> i'm trying to show the humanity of the afghan people, trying to show the natural beauty of the country. so much it reminds me of aspen or arizona. the beautiful snowcapped mountains and deserts. it's really extraordinary. the landscape. and they're -- afghans have a great sense of humor. they're extremely hospitable. it's great to spend an evening with some afghans because there's going to be a lot of laughs, a lot of good food. and it's just -- breaks your heart to think this war has been going on for decades and the misguided, my view, policy to continue this war because there's no way in the world afghans are going to succumb to this kind of foreign

intervention. it's just not going to happen. i think if you get to know the afghan people and their personality, you realize that, you know, we're going to have to be there forever and that's just not going to happen. eventually it's going to have to be settled but not on the battlefield. >> steve mccurry, thank you very much indeed. >> my pleasure. thank you. >> and just as afghanistan cast an irresistible spell on steve mccurry, oxford has the same effect on storyteller phillip hallman. but not the day-to-day oxford that we know here in england. an alternative oxford, as conceived in his brilliantly creative mind. that is where i found the famous novelist as he released volume 1 of his new trilogy, "the book of dust." his long-awaited follow-up to the highly acclaimed series "his dark materials." >> phillip pullman, welcome to the program. >> thank you. >> so this is now 17 years since your last major work. what made you do the new book?

why now? >> well, it's been quite a long time in the writing. i began writing this one ten or so years ago, and it's taken me quite a long time to get this far with it. when i finished "his dark materials" with a book called "the amber spyglass," i had a sense that wasn't the last i was going to know about lyra, the heroine. i felt she was going to have some more adventures. but i didn't know what they were or where they would take her. and when i started writing about her in this book, she's only six months old in this story. so she's not able to do very much or do anything at all of her own volition. she's certainly the center of all the activity that's going on. i was pleased to see her at that age because this book sets in place the beginning of the story which is going to come into full fruition 20 years later. >> and this book of yours is set in an old-fashioned sort of

version of oxford, a sort of alternative universe as you're known for. so i would like you to just give those very few people around the world who may not know the characters and the substance of your fiction an idea of the big epic that you're sketching out now. >> the focus on this book, in "labelle sauvage," the first part of "the book dust," are the eyes through which we see the story, a boy called million com, 11 years old, and he's the son of an innkeeper called the trout on the edge of the river thames. and his view of the city is not like lyra's view. lyra's view as we saw it in "his dark materials" is a scholarly place, full of ancient rituals and libraries and books and learning and so on. malcolm's is different from that. he sees it from the perspective of someone who works on the

river. he knows the river and the canals very well. oxford is laced through and through with streams and canals and tributaries. it's a very watery place, and malcolm sees it from this point of view and he sees different kinds of things in oxford from the things we saw in "his dark materials." >> it's obviously very inspiring for you. but you also once said "i am religious. i'm an atheist." aren't those two in conflict? what do you mean by that? >> i think what i meant by saying that was the questions that religion asks, questions like why are we here, why does the world exist at all, what must we do to be good,why dowe feel not at ease in the world as if we don't belong here, those questions are part of being a human being. and we all ask them, especially in our adolescence, especially when we're growing up and beginning to take an intellectual curiosity in ourselves and our lives. and they're religious questions fundamentally. the answers the church has given traditionally are not answers

that i can believe in or accept. like many medium i live outside the church. but i was brought up in the christian religion. i was brought up as a member of the church england. my grandfather was a clergyman. and the ritual, the songs, the prayers, the hymns of the church are very close and very dear to me. they're very much part of what made me the person i am. i'm a cultural christian. that phrase is a helpful one. a cultural christian but not a believing one. >> i just want to push you a little bit on this because your philosophy in this regard caused some controversy in america at least with the last book and your taking into question, your questioning of organized religion. what specifically do you think caused the controversy, and do you expect that again? >> i never know what to expect with reactions from my books. i don't know if it will happen

again. the problem with organized religion, as i see it, is not that it is religion, not that it believes in god, not that side of it. belief is not the problem. the problem comes when it acquires political power. with a large p as in an empire or a state, a theocratic state or a small p as in the compass of a single family. >> i think also that's probably a very important message to get across to the young people, who are your main readers. you spoke just earlier about adolescence, about puberty, about your audience and about your characters. and it's very, very important to you, that, right? you talk sort of about a bit of an epiphany when you were going through that period yourself. >> the period of adolescence is a very important one in the lives of all of us because apart from the changing things we feel in our body, new hormones, new feelings, new fears and desires and hopes and all that sort of

thing, we're beginning to acquire an intellectual curiosity as well, an interest in the things arounds us, the way the world is run. these big questions of life and death and meaning and importance and so on come into our consciousness for the first time. it's a thrilling time. it's a frightening time. it's an exciting time and a very meaningful time in the lives of all of us, really. and that is a period i remember very vividly from my own adolescence, and it's the period i've been writing about in this book and in "his dark materials." but it's something as i say that we all go through. >> so given that you are really having these profound messages for your readers, i wonder what you think sitting in oxford right now, university and you must be aware of the whole debate over safe spaces and what students should be exposed to and oh, don't offend me, the kind of philosophy that's sort of gallivanting across academia and universities in the united

states, here in britain and sometimes in africa as well. what is your view on that controversy? >> i don't think we have the right not to be offended. we don't have the right to live in a safe space. the world is not a safe space. a safe space is not an interesting space. if you're never challenged, if your ideas are never challenged sxargd with, how are you going to develop your ideas? a safe space to me sounds like somewhere shut away from the free air and the winds of excitement and understanding and curiosity. i wouldn't want to live in a safe space. i'd want to live in a place where argument can flurish and different ideas can swing through and bring the fresh air of life with them. that's a much more interesting place than a safe space, which it seems to me is a place where you'd eventually die of not being able to breathe. >> let me ask you a little about what you write and whether you see parallels to today's politics. >> today's politics are a very extraordinary mixture of

expected things, unexpected things, unpredictable things, crazy things. last year, 2016, was the year when my country, great britain, voted to leave the european union, something which i deplore. i deplore because this great project, this european project which has been lasting all my lifetime and which has kept the peace in a continent that has been riven by war for over 1,000 years, the result of the referendum was incomprehensible to me. i couldn't have predicted it. i deplore it. we don't know where the world is going at the moment. there's a lot of anger, a lot of resentment, a lot of fury, and a lot of undirected hatred spilling around. it's not an agreeing place for a lot of the time. but it's where we live. we have to try and deal with it. >> you talk about the anger and all the rest of it. do you recognize also this kind of yearning or nostalgia for empire, or for the past? right now here in england

there's a very successful film called "good-bye christopher robin." it's about winnie the pooh, about the life of the author a.a.milne and his son. what do you make of that kind of writing for children and today? >> it's a very strong stream in british literature, this nostalgia for childhood. i don't think it's a thing children feel. children don't feel they want to be children. children want to be grown up. they want to be doing big things, important things out there in the world. it's a feeling that was felt by people such as a.a. milne, kenneth graham, who wrote "wind in the willows," other writers of that so-called golden age of children's literature, expressed this feeling which seems to me sickly and unhealthy. it's not something i share at all. i would much rather see children grow up than see them remain as children. there's something wrong with the idea of peter pan. there's something wrong with the

idea of the little boy and his teddy bear playing at the edge of the forest forever and ever and ever. no, no. away with that. let's go on. >> let me ask you, is there something wrong with the age and the era of smartphones? do you think as a writer who lives, you know, in the printed word and on paper, do you feel that your craft is under threat from the whole smartphone era? >> it's a very good question and very shrewdly asked. yes, well, i've chosen to write books set in a universe where the smartphone has not been invented. if you're in any danger, you just call up help and away it comes with a smartphone. it's very hard to make a story work of the sort of story i like to write in the era of the smartphone. so i would rather do away with it. but then don't forget in most children's literature you have to do away with the parents before the children can have an adventure. doing away with things is part and parcel of writing children's literature. >> i would like to ask you just

one last rather poignant question. you were a teacher once yourself, and you have come to the rescue of a certain, you know, very, very sad and tragic group of people who were killed in the grenfell fire, which was last june here. tell me about what motivated you, what moved you to weigh in on behalf of this young girl. >> i was shocked like everyone in the country who saw that terrible fire, that extraordinary night full of fire and destruction and death. and when the chance arose to do something, a little thing, to raise some money on behalf of the grenfell victims, i thought that i must join in, i must do what i can do to help. so they auctioned the rights to naming a character in the book i was writing now. and i'm very pleased to find that it was -- the auction was won by someone who would like me to name a character nurhudda al wahabi, who's one of the girls

who very tragically died in that fire. i'm very happy to do that. and nurhudda will have a part in the second part of the "book of dust" which i'm writing now. >> it is a remarkable gift for her family. she will live on forever in the covers of your book. >> i hope her relatives and friends like the character that i'm writing about. of course it won't be the real one, whom i never knew. but i hope they feel i do justice to her name. >> philip pullman, thank you so much for joining us. >> it's been a pleasure. thank you. >> and while pullman's ambitious stories challenge his many readers, sometimes it's the simplest tales that inspire, especially younger minds. i caught up with the indomitable 94-year-old judith carr. she sold more than 10 million copies of the stories and illustrations that she made up for her own children. the best known and best loved, why, "the tiger who came to tea" of course. >> what was it then all those years ago that made you think a

tiger, a scary didn't think a scary bitey bad tiger. i thought a soft furry orange stripy black and white tiger. and that's what my daughter thought as well when they saw it in the zoo. and i didn't mention the fact that they bit people. i didn't think about it. but she used to say talk the tiger. she was 2 and very bossy. it was very boring at home. and so we both thought it was about time somebody came and a tiger seemed as good an idea as anything, really. >> and there 5 million copies were born. i mean, this book itself sold 5

million copies around the world. did you even dream that such a thing was possible when you were talking the tiger to tasey when she was just 2 years old? >> it didn't occur to me. i didn't do the book until about five years later because i was so busy with the children. i was pleasantly surprised when they said they'd publish it. >> what do you hope families have got from these books? >> well, you know, i'm terribly pleased they like them. what more can one ask for, really? i never dreamt anything like that would happen to me. i wanted originally, like everybody who goes to art school, to be a painter, and i just wanted to draw. i still do. it's the one thing i want to do. and my mother got quite worried about me. she and my brother also, who was

a lawyer. concerned. >> whthat you would never be ab to make a living. >> exactly. who would marry me? >> well, you did get married. >> and he did keep me. >> and he did keep you. >> because you make no money with picture books to start with. >> and in the end you did actually make a very good living with all these books and all your drawings. >> yes. to everybody's surprise. particularly mine. >> and possibly to the surprise of your parents and history. if i could go back all those years, when you were born in weimar, germany and you were a kid at the time just before the war was about to start, just before hitler. what was that like? what was your childhood like in germany at that time? your father, i believe, was a satirical writer and got on the wrong side of adolf hitler.

>> yes. he warned against him, and he mocked him. which is the worst thing you can do. very early on. so he was warned by an unknown policeman who just ran up one day and said get out at once, they're trying to take away your passport. this was before hitler had actually come to power. and he took the next train out of germany. my mother didn't know what to do because they hadn't even had time to talk. and she joined him in prague. and he said he wanted my mother and brother and me out of germany before the elections because he thought hitler would hang on to us to get him back. and the day after the elections, on the 6th of march, we heard from our housekeeper, who'd stayed behind, that they came to our house at 8:00 in the morning

to demand all our passports. >> wow. >> so my 94 years are because of that. i wouldn't be here otherwise. incredible foresight and luck. >> what does it take to keep you going at 94 in the way you're doing now? more books, more drawings, more projects. >> well, i love to draw. that's really all it is. i was very, very happily married for 52 years. and obviously, i still miss my husband. but the only compensation really is that i don't cook. i don't have anyone to chat with. for the first time in my life i can spend 24 hours a day

drawing. that's something. that's what i do. one would be rather stupid not to at the age of 94, not to feel that possibly there wasn't unlimited time left. >> well, do you know what? you are incredibly youthful and young of spirit, and thank you very much, judith karr, for talking to us. >> thank you for talking to me. >> and that's it for our program tonight. thanks for watching this edition of "amanpour" on pbs. join us again tomorrow night. ♪ >> announcer: "amanpour" on pbs was made possible with the generous support of rosalind p. was made possible with the generous support of rosalind p. walter. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com

>> welcome to witness news, broadcasting to viewers in north america on pbs and around the globe. our top stories. the united states is criticized by fell u.n. security council members were calling an emergency meeting over protests in iran. the author of a damning book on donald trump says he stands by everything he wrote in his dipics of a chaotic white house. >> i will tell you will the one description that everyone gave. everyone has in common. they all say he is like a child. >> the east coast of america in the grim of an arctic blast. at least 19 people have died and temperatures could fall to minus 40 in some places this