'It does not do to dwell on dreams, and forget to live'.
The Harry Potter books are one of my most favourite series and whenever I need a pick-me-up, this is something which I always turn to. The audiobooks, read by Stephen Fry are particularly addictive, and I'm using my Audible credits to get them all.
I love the incredibly dry sense of humour that adorns Dumbledore, I relish in Professor McGonagall's strength of character and no-nonsense attitude. To say she reminds me of my most favourite boss is an understatement.
Hogwarts and everything about it is magical, enchanting, and captivating. Everyone who loves Harry Potter wants to visit Hogwarts, even if just for a few days, to see everything, from the talking portraits to the moving staircases and the delicious food that appears from nowhere.
Stephen Fry is one of my most favourite people to narrate an audiobook. The easy way in which he falls into character, time, and time again is beguiling, and I will never tire of listening.
I am excited to watch the new series when it comes out. I am going to try not to go in with any expectations, but with an open mind to embrace new actors.
If you have never read the Harry Potter books, and you like a bit of witchcraft and wizardry - then what are you waiting for?!!!
About the Book
Harry Potter has never even heard of Hogwarts when the letters start dropping on the doormat at number four, Privet Drive. Addressed in green ink on yellowish parchment with a purple seal, they are swiftly confiscated by his grisly aunt and uncle. Then, on Harry's eleventh birthday, a great beetle-eyed giant of a man called Rubeus Hagrid bursts in with some astonishing news: Harry Potter is a wizard, and he has a place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. An incredible adventure is about to begin!
Joanne Rowling was born on 31st July 1965 at Yate General Hospital near Bristol, and grew up in Gloucestershire in England and in Chepstow, Gwent, in south-east Wales.
Her father, Peter, was an aircraft engineer at the Rolls Royce factory in Bristol and her mother, Anne, was a science technician in the Chemistry department at Wyedean Comprehensive, where Jo herself went to school. Anne was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when Jo was a teenager and died in 1990, before the Harry Potter books were published. Jo also has a younger sister, Di.
The young Jo grew up surrounded by books. “I lived for books,’’ she has said. “I was your basic common-or-garden bookworm, complete with freckles and National Health spectacles.”
Jo wanted to be a writer from an early age. She wrote her first book at the age of six – a story about a rabbit, called ‘Rabbit’. At just eleven, she wrote her first novel – about seven cursed diamonds and the people who owned them.
Jo studied at Exeter University, where she read so widely outside her French and Classics syllabus that she clocked up a fine of £50 for overdue books at the University library. Her knowledge of Classics would one day come in handy for creating the spells in the Harry Potter series, some of which are based on Latin.
Her course included a year in Paris. “I lived in Paris for a year as a student,” Jo tweeted after the 2015 terrorist attacks there. “It’s one of my favourite places on earth.”
After her degree, she moved to London and worked in a series of jobs, including one as a researcher at Amnesty International. “There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them.” She said later. “My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.”
Jo conceived the idea of Harry Potter in 1990 while sitting on a delayed train from Manchester to London King’s Cross. Over the next five years, she began to map out all seven books of the series. She wrote mostly in longhand and gradually built up a mass of notes, many of which were scribbled on odd scraps of paper.
Taking her notes with her, she moved to northern Portugal to teach English as a foreign language, married Jorge Arantes in 1992 and had a daughter, Jessica, in 1993. When the marriage ended later that year, she returned to the UK to live in Edinburgh, with Jessica and a suitcase containing the first three chapters of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
In Edinburgh, Jo trained as a teacher and began teaching in the city’s schools, but she continued to write in every spare moment.
Having completed the full manuscript, she sent the first three chapters to a number of literary agents, one of whom wrote back asking to see the rest of it. She says it was “the best letter I had ever received in my life.”
The book was first published by Bloomsbury Children’s Books in June 1997, under the name J.K. Rowling.
The “K” stands for Kathleen, her paternal grandmother’s name. It was added at her publisher’s request, who thought a book by an obviously female author might not appeal to the target audience of young boys.
