AUTHOR Philip Pullman last night signed a letter which said the Pope should not be given the honour of a UK state visit.

Pope Benedict XVI will arrive in the UK today to visit Edinburgh, Glasgow and London.

He will then head to Birmingham to attend a beatification ceremony for Cardinal John Henry Newman, a 19th-century convert to Catholicism, who had been a leading Anglican cleric in Oxford.

But Mr Pullman added his name to a letter in yesterday’s Guardian newspaper, which said the head of the Catholic church should not be “given the honour of a state visit to this country”.

The letter was also signed by actor Stephen Fry, Oxford University professor Richard Dawkins, and human rights campaigner and former Oxford East Green candidate Peter Tatchell.

Mr Pullman lives in Cumnor and wrote the award-winning trilogy His Dark Materials, which drew criticism from the Catholic church.

In some parts of the US the film adaptation of the novels, The Golden Compass, was boycotted in cinemas.

The letter points to “opposing equal rights for lesbians, gay, bisexual and transgender people” and “failing to address the many cases of abuse of children within its own organisation”.

Last night, the Catholic Church Media Centre declined to comment.