Month: November 2022

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29 November 2022

One billion hours of listening landmark surpassed for Harry Potter audiobooks on Audible

Pottermore Publishing and Audible have announced an extraordinary milestone – over one billion hours of the Harry Potter stories have now been listened to on Audible globally, since the audiobooks were first made available there seven years ago!  Mind you, that’s just a number (even if it is a massive one)! What’s immeasurable is the love that fans have for these stories.  To help you visualise that figure, in one billion hours you could hypothetically:

  • Take the iconic train journey from King’s Cross to Edinburgh 222 million times
  • Listen to Harry Potter books 1-7 read by Jim Dale 8,547,009 times
  • Go through Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry more than 14,000 times!

Stephen Fry, who narrates the UK English editions of the audiobooks, says: ‘These statistics are astonishing. Almost every day someone will come up and tell me how important the audiobooks have been in their lives, and it means the world to me.’  Jim Dale, narrator of the North American editions, says: ‘Especially rewarding for me has been the opportunity to touch the lives of so many young people, and the knowledge that my spoken words have brought both comfort and support when needed, and, of course always, so much magic!’

Jennie McCann, Pottermore’s MD, explains: ‘We’re so delighted how many listeners have made a permanent place in their lives for these audiobooks. The original recordings that were released on CD are cherished versions of these incredible stories, so we took great care when remastering them to deliver the best sound quality for the new generation of listeners. We’ve since produced and released editions in an array of further languages and continue to add to that list each year both on Audible and via other platforms.’  Diana Dapito, Head of Consumer Content at Audible, says ‘the evergreen popularity and insatiable appetite for the Harry Potter audiobooks on Audible is both staggering and, at once, not at all surprising.’

We’d love to hear your stories of listening to Harry Potter on audio – share your listening love on social media using the hashtag #HarryPotterxAudible #HearTheMagic

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25 November 2022

Troubled Blood coming to BBC One this December

Picture shows: (l-r) Cormoran Strike (TOM BURKE), Robin Ellacott (HOLLIDAY GRAINGER). © Bronte Film and TV. Photo credit: BBC/Bronte Film and TV Ltd/Alex Rendell

Troubled Blood, Robert Galbraith’s 5th Cormoran Strike novel, is coming to BBC One in a 4 part adaptation starting on the 11th December at 9pm. All episodes will be available to view from 9pm on Sunday 11 December on iPlayer.

Written by Tom Edge and directed by Sue Tully, the series sees Tom Burke and Holliday Grainger return as Strike and Robin.

Private detective Cormoran Strike (Tom Burke) is visiting his family in Cornwall when he’s approached by a woman, Anna Phipps (Sophie Ward) asking for help finding her mother, Margot Bamborough (Abigail Lawrie), who went missing under mysterious circumstances in 1974.

Strike’s never tackled a cold case before let alone one forty years old, but despite the slim chance of success, he’s intrigued and takes it on, adding to the long list of cases that he and his partner in the agency Robin Ellacott (Holliday Grainger) are currently working on. Robin herself is also juggling a messy divorce and unwanted male attention as well as battling her own feelings about Strike.

As Strike and Robin investigate Margot’s disappearance, they come up against a fiendishly complex case with a psychopathic serial killer and witnesses who cannot all be trusted. They learn that even cases decades old can prove to be deadly.