Pratchett takes swipe at Tolkien as he wins his first award

The bestselling British author of the past decade has, at long last, won a major literary award.

Terry Pratchett, whose Discworld comic fantasies and other books have sold more than 27 million copies, received the Carnegie medal for children's literature yesterday. He marked the occasion with a swipe at J R R Tolkien, contrasting the heroic warfare of the Lord of the Rings trilogy with his own ideals of peace and justice. "Far more beguiling to me than the idea that evil can be destroyed by throwing a piece of expensive costume jewellery into a volcano is the possibility that peace between nations can be maintained by careful diplomacy," he said.

And, in an apparent reference to J K Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series of books, he said: "Fantasy is more than wizards. For instance, this book is about rats that are intelligent. But it is also about the even more fantastic idea that humans are capable of intelligence as well. "Fantasy isn't just about wizards and silly wands. It's about seeing the world from new directions."

Pratchett collected the medal for his children's novel, The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, fending off a shortlist that included such stars of young people's fiction as Geraldine McCaughrean and Peter Dickinson.

Speaking at a ceremony at the British Library, Mr Pratchett launched a veiled attack on the cycle of retaliation driving the current "war on terrorism".

The Amazing Maurice, which begins as a version of the Pied Piper story, has been viewed by some readers as a fable of global politics. Pratchett responded: "I wouldn't insult even rats by turning them into handy metaphors for anything. It's just unfortunate that the current international situation is pretty much the same old, dull international situation in a new mask, in a world obsessed by the monsters it has made up, and dragons that are hard to kill."

He criticised the drive "to take revenge for the revenge that was taken in revenge for the revenge last time", saying: "That doesn't work, even in a book. It's a path that leads only downwards, and still the world flocks along with it. It makes you want to spit."

The rodent protagonists of his prize-winning story grow "educated" by exchanging conflict for compassion, hostility for sympathy. They evolve away from naked aggression and pure self-interest. "In the book the rats go to war, which is, I hope, gripping," Pratchett said. "But they make peace, which is astonishing."

Terry Pratchett was born in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire in 1948. He worked as a press officer for Britain's nuclear power stations before becoming a full-time writer. Married, with a grown-up daughter, he now lives in Wiltshire.

Since achieving fame in the mid-Eighties, he has often found himself at odds with the establishment in children's literature. He has been shortlisted twice before for the Carnegie medal, which is organised by the Youth Libraries Group of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals. His Discworld series sell about 500,000 copies each in the UK alone, and research shows that buyers consist of at least as many middle-aged women as adolescent boys.

Yet he considers that what he jokingly calls the "dirndl mafia" of high-minded librarians, editors and teachers, especially in the US, has patronised and disparaged his work. "Recent Discworld novels have spun on such concerns as the nature of belief, politics and even journalistic freedom," he said yesterday. "But put in one lousy dragon and they call you a fantasy writer."

Pratchett pointed out that The Amazing Maurice, with its interrogation of social values, refuses to conform to his image as a wacky, zany comedian. "It has very little wack and hardly any zane. It's quite a serious book. Only the scenery is funny."

'The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents' is published by Doubleday