I had passed through the entire British education system studying literature, culminating in three years of reading English at Oxford, and they’d never told me about something as basic as the importance of point of view in fiction!

Pullman is expressing frustration with the gap between formal literary education and the practical craft knowledge needed to write fiction. Despite extensive study of English literature—up to an Oxford degree—he claims he was never explicitly taught a foundational narrative concept: point of view. The remark critiques an academic tendency to prioritize canon, history, and interpretation over the mechanics of how stories are constructed and how readers are guided. It also underscores Pullman’s belief that storytelling is a technical art with teachable principles, and that understanding narrative perspective is central to shaping meaning, sympathy, and reliability in fiction.