FAQs

The Harry Potter novels follow a young, orphan wizard Harry Potter, as he discovers his magical powers and begins life at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry with his faithful pet owl, Hedwig. Across the seven books, Harry and his friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger discover friendship and together face adventure, danger and the growing threat of the Dark Wizard, Lord Voldemort.

The idea for Harry Potter came to J.K. Rowling on a delayed train journey from Manchester to London’s King Cross in 1990.

She spent the next five years mapping out the series and drafting the first book and finished the manuscript for Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in 1995. In total, it took her seventeen years to write the seven-book series, famously completing the final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in Edinburgh’s Balmoral Hotel in January 2007.  She was overcome with emotion having lived with Harry Potter for all those years, likening the feeling of finishing the series to ‘suffering a bereavement’.

J.K. Rowling started writing the first book whilst living and working in London and briefly in Manchester.

After the death of her mother from MS, she moved to Porto, Portugal in 1991 to teach English as a foreign language and there she continued to write. After her first marriage failed, she moved to Edinburgh in 1993 with her baby daughter and the first three chapters of Harry Potter in a suitcase.

She completed the first book as a single mother on benefits, writing in the city’s cafes whilst her daughter slept in the buggy beside her. She enjoyed writing with a background noise of voices along with the feeling of being alone.  The remaining six books were written while Jo completed a teaching qualification and taught in the city’s schools.  In 1998 she gave up teaching and became a full-time writer.

J.K. Rowling described writing the first book in a Sunday Times interview in 2024, which you can read in In My Own Words here. She says: ‘There were seven years (and three changes of country and a lot of seismic life events) between having the idea and publication. I kept losing hope and putting it away, but that happened less and less as I worked on it. At a certain point it, or I, caught fire, and I stopped doubting. I can remember feeling elated after writing the first Quidditch match, which flowed out of the pen and was barely revised afterwards.’

The recommended reading age to start the Harry Potter books is 9 years. The series is designed to grow with readers as the themes become darker and the plots more complex.   For the same reasons, adults enjoy reading the books too.

The films made by Warner Bros in the early 2000s were based on the Harry Potter books, with J.K. Rowling advising on scripts. There are eight films in total with the final book Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows having been adapted into two films.  The films were released globally around the same time as the books were coming out:

• Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s / Sorcerer’s Stone (2001)
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007)
• Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (2009)
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 (2010)
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (2011)

In total the films have grossed a combined $7.7 billion at the worldwide box office.

There won’t be any more Harry Potter books, but to accompany the series, J.K. Rowling wrote three short companion volumes for charity: Quidditch Through the Ages, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and The Tales of Beedle the Bard. Fantastic Beasts went on to inspire a new series of films featuring Magizoologist Newt Scamander.

In 2016 Harry’s story as a grown-up was continued in a stage play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which J.K. Rowling wrote with playwright Jack Thorne and director John Tiffany, and which is now playing in locations around the world.  The script book was published in the same year and was an instant bestseller.

A longform television adaptation is now in production.  The series will be a faithful adaptation of the Harry Potter books, to be shown over a decade.  Series One, based on the first book Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, has been filmed at Warner Bros Leavesden Studios in the UK – the same location used for the original films – and will be aired globally by HBO Max in December 2026.

The roles of Harry, Ron, and Hermione are played by new young British talents, and they are joined by a renowned ensemble cast, including John Lithgow as Professor Dumbledore, Nick Frost as Hagrid, and Janet McTeer as Professor McGonagall.  The series will lead a new generation of fandom, full of the fantastic detail and much-loved characters and dramatic locations that Harry Potter fans have loved for nearly thirty years.

J.K. Rowling is an executive producer; she has visited the TV set at Leavesden and has given her advice on the script for series 1.

The much-loved original audiobooks, voiced by Stephen Fry and Jim Dale and first recorded in 1999, are available on all major audiobook platforms. There are also audio versions of the companion books Quidditch Through the Ages, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and The Tales of Beedle the Bard. The Harry Potter book series has recently been re-recorded as full-cast audiobooks for Audible, with different actors voicing each character. This too featured a renowned cast including Hugh Laurie as Dumbledore and Matthew McFadyean as Voldemort and has been a huge success. The Harry Potter audiobooks have now been listened to for two billion hours on Audible, including the original Stephen Fry / Jim Dale recordings.

The Harry Potter franchise is one of the most successful British businesses in modern history; a global cultural and commercial enterprise spanning publishing, film, TV, theatre, games, retail and consumer products, theme parks and experiences, and, by association, tourism in the UK. To date, the Harry Potter books have sold more than 600 million copies worldwide and are available in 85 languages and in more than 200 territories, placing the series among the most successful publishing properties of all time.

J.K. Rowling gave an interview to the Sunday Times newspaper in 2024 and said about Harry Potter first entering the Sunday Times Bestseller list: ‘I was overjoyed, because it felt like something that happened to real writers. I can’t overstate how timid I was about calling myself a writer. Even after I was published I hesitated to say it out loud, because I’d wanted it for so long and didn’t want to jinx myself.’  About the first book’s success, she says: ‘It’s all a bit of a blur, to be honest. Winning the Smarties Book Prize was a massive moment, then I got a record advance from America and everything went crazy.’

You can read her full answers in In My Own Words here.

For the latest news, updates and information visit HarryPotter.com and its  Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube channels, the official home of Harry Potter, Fantastic Beasts and the wizarding world.

After finishing writing the Harry Potter books, J.K. Rowling took a break and decided to write a book for adults. The first draft of The Ickabog, written for her young family, went up into the attic, where it remained for nearly a decade. Then, during the Covid-19 pandemic, she had the idea of getting The Ickabog back down and publishing it in free instalments online, for children in lockdown. Her now teenage children were touchingly enthusiastic, and she found herself once again immersed in the world of Cornucopia.

As she worked to finish the story, she started reading chapters nightly to her children again, just as she had done when they were little. She said, “This was one of the most extraordinary experiences of my writing life, as The Ickabog’s first two readers told me what they remember from when they were tiny, and demanded the reinstatement of bits they’d particularly liked (I obeyed)!”

The story is primarily aimed at seven to twelve year olds. It’s a story best read aloud, so if you have someone to read it to you, even better!

Having decided to publish the story, J.K. Rowling thought it would be wonderful if children were involved as The Ickabog unfolded by illustrating the story and its colourful characters for the book.

An illustration competition was held in 2020 in each territory, and after an incredible global response from children, the winners of each artwork competition were chosen by publishers and featured in the book when it was published some months later for thousands of people to see.

The Ickabog is now available in print, audio and e-book, and translated into over 26 languages, for children around the world to enjoy. Each local edition of the book includes illustrations by the winners of a competition in that territory. An edition with illustrations by Ben Mantle is also available.

Between 2020 and 2024, J.K. Rowling  donated her royalties to her charitable trust, The Volant Trust  to assist vulnerable groups who were particularly impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK and internationally.

At the moment there are no plans to make a movie or stage adaptation of The Ickabog.

J.K. Rowling is a meticulous planner and knew exactly what was going to happen, and where, and how, before she started writing it. The Christmas Pig is a magical story, but in a very different way to Harry Potter.  She says: ‘You’re entering a world that runs according to its own peculiar magical laws, and there is magic around Christmas Eve, but there are no wands and wizards.’

J.K. Rowling wrote most of the story in her writing room in the garden, but she remembers mapping out the Land of the Lost while her family was on holiday. She says: ‘My children were playing on the beach and I was huddled beneath a sunshade, drawing maps and thinking through the logistics of the world.’

J.K. Rowling worked with Jim Field through their editor, Ruth, who sent Jim’s rough drawings on to her for feedback. She says: ‘As he was getting everything pretty much spot on the first time he drew it, most of my comments consisted of expressions of delight! Jim’s illustrations are simply perfect. It really is as though he got inside my head and drew what he saw there. I gasped out loud when I saw one particular illustration (I can’t say which it is without giving spoilers), because it was such a perfect representation of one of my favourite scenes.’

The recommended reading age for The Christmas Pig is 6+.  J.K. Rowling says: ‘There are definitely younger children who could read this alone, as well as older children. I’d love to think it could lead to interesting conversations between younger readers and adults who might be reading the book aloud to them, about the things we treasure, about how change and loss are inevitable parts of life, but that wonderful things can come out of them, all the same.’

J.K. Rowling says: ‘My equivalent of Dur Pig was a large, blue-eyed, pink and white teddy bear, which was bought for me by my grandparents. I ended up calling him Henry, after one of the trains on Thomas the Tank Engine. He’s still with me, bald in places due to my habit of picking at his fur when I was very small.’

‘Psychologists call these treasured toys ‘transitional objects’, which can soothe children and act as a comforting stand-in for a parent when needed. That’s quite a clinical way of looking at it, though. I see them as invested with a certain kind of magic. They may come to us formed, but we remake them in our own image, investing them with characteristics of our own, and idealised personalities. We look after them and they look after us. That special bond is what I set out to explore in The Christmas Pig.’

The main protagonists are detective duo Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott who run a private detective agency in London and investigate a different case in each book.

Yes, the books are adapted for television by Bronte Productions and appear on the BBC in the UK and HBO in the USA.  The latest adaptation, The Running Grave, will broadcast in 2026.

J.K. Rowling has always loved Golden Age detective fiction and wanted to write classical whodunits with a modern twist.

Part of her fascination with the genre is that it has clear rules. She says, “I’m intrigued by those rules, and I like playing with them. Your detective should always lay out the information fairly for the reader, but they will always be ahead of the game. There are certain immutable laws of detective fiction that I follow.”

After Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling wanted to go back to the beginning of a writing career in this new genre, to work without hype or expectation and to receive totally unvarnished feedback.  Before her identity was uncovered, her first Strike novel, The Cuckoo’s Calling, garnered excellent reviews.

Since her cover was blown, she has continued to write as Robert Galbraith to keep the distinction from her other writing.

J.K. Rowling chose Robert because it is one of her favourite men’s names.  She says: “Galbraith came about for a slightly odd reason. When I was a child, I really wanted to be called ‘Ella Galbraith’.  I have no idea why, but the name had a fascination for me.”

Odder still, there was a well-known economist called J.K. Galbraith, something she only remembered by the time it was far too late. She was completely paranoid that people might take this as a clue and land at her real identity, but thankfully nobody was looking that deeply at the author’s name!

For the latest news, updates and information on the books and TV adaptations, visit www.robert-galbraith.com, and its social media channels:

Facebook

Instagram

Lumos is a leading global children’s charity, founded by J.K. Rowling who remains its life president.  It partners with governments, civil society and young people with lived experience to transform care systems globally and advocate for family-based solutions that help children thrive.  Despite clear evidence of the harms of institutionalisation, an estimated 5.4 million children worldwide, most of whom are not orphans, continue to live in institutions, and a much larger number of children are at risk of institutionalisation – those living in poverty, experiencing domestic violence and abuse, and living in countries affected by conflict.  In its 20^th anniversary in 2025, Lumos launched a new ‘10-Year Ambition’ plan to support more children in more countries, more quickly.

The Volant Trust is not a charity, but a grant-making trust solely financed by J.K. Rowling, which primarily helps fund charitable organisations and projects based in Scotland working to alleviate social deprivation, particularly concerned with women and children. In the last 25 years the Volant Trust has donated over £86 million to charities and projects. Following the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, J. K. Rowling donated over £12 million to the Volant Trust from the royalties of her children’s book The Ickabog. This was used to support over 140 charities and organisations in the UK and internationally to help vulnerable groups who were particularly impacted by Covid-19.

The J.K. Rowling Women’s Fund is a private fund, not a charity.  It helps women in the UK who do not have adequate means to raise or defend legal actions, and who have lost their livelihoods, suffered harm and discrimination because of their belief that biological sex is unchangeable, or who have lost protections or safeguards that women and girls are entitled to under the Equality Act 2010 and as clarified by the Supreme Court judgment of 2025, such as the right to single sex spaces, particularly for vulnerable women.

J.K. Rowling was an early adopter of Twitter, now X, where she now has 13 million followers. She mainly chooses to express her personal views and beliefs there, and to interact with fans of all her books, as well as share jokes and observations on everyday life.  Her website also has an In My Own Words section where you can read her longform views on a variety of topics.

Official news and updates are shared through her Facebook and Instagram accounts listed below, which she does not manage personally.  Any accounts that do not use these exact handles are likely imposters. Please visit the Enquiries page for more details.

Official Accounts:

X/Twitter:  @jk_rowling

Facebook

Instagram: (children’s book news only):

J.K. Rowling believes that men and women are defined by their biological sex, and that defining gender solely by self-identification undermines protections for women.

After observing for some years what she saw as an erosion of women’s rights due to gender self-identification, and an alarming increase in young people wishing to medically transition to the opposite sex, she decided to speak out in 2019, tweeting in support of the researcher Maya Forstater, who had been sacked from her job for stating that sex is a biological fact and is immutable.

Following the enormous reaction to her tweets, both negative and positive, she followed up with a 3,600 word essay on her website in June 2020 here, covering her:

• Personal history as a survivor of sexual assault and domestic abuse, arguing from experience that retaining single-sex spaces in many areas of life is vital for the safety and privacy of vulnerable women
• Concern that self-ID gender laws are eroding legal protections for women and allow men into female-only spaces
• Support for transgender people, wishing them to be safe and free from discrimination, while at the same time maintaining that biological sex and its physical realities cannot be erased
• Opposition to a climate of fear where individuals face abuse or professional consequences for defending the concept of biological sex
• Concern that if sex can be chosen and isn’t real, same-sex attraction cannot be either, thus undermining lesbian and gay people
• Concern over the epidemic of youth transitioning, arguing that chemical or surgical intervention is doing irretrievable and unnecessary harm to young people and will have long term impacts.

In 2023 she did a sit-down interview with the former Westboro Baptist Church member turned advocate for dialogue Megan Phelps Roper, for the podcast The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling.  She and Megan talked in depth about her convictions and experience of public backlash, as part of a series which explored wider themes of free speech, gender identity and online contagion, through extensive interviews with supporters and critics on both sides.

Over the past seven years, J.K. Rowling has been a dedicated advocate for vulnerable women and children adversely affected by gender ideology, both by speaking up and by founding organisations devoted to supporting them. Since the UK Supreme Court judgment of April 2025 ruled unanimously that the terms “sex,” “man,” and “woman” in the Equality Act 2010 refer strictly to biological sex (a person’s sex at birth), rather than a sex changed via a Gender Recognition Certificate, she has vigorously defended this clarification in the UK law and challenged those attempting to circumvent it.

J.K. Rowling has used her wealth and platform to help protect women and girls hard fought rights to single sex spaces; to defend freedom of speech and thought, and to protect the rights and safety of some of the most vulnerable in our society particularly women and children.

The JKRWF does not support legal actions against transgender individuals or efforts to limit trans rights. Instead, it funds women taking legal action in the UK to preserve their existing rights under the Equality Act 2010, which are often overlooked or threatened.  This includes issues surrounding single-sex spaces in prisons, changing rooms and school toilets, as well as the right for women to be able to assert, without facing job loss or discrimination, that a man cannot become a woman. In many instances, the JKRWF supports women who are defending themselves against legal challenges, rather than mounting challenges themselves.

Beira’s Place is not an anti-rights organisation.  Rather, it provides a free service that addresses the critical need for single-sex support for female survivors of male violence, who often find the best recovery environment is a women-only space.

Since 2000, J.K. Rowling has donated over £200m to a wide range of humanitarian causes, particularly to do with women and children, choosing to support charities and organisations that have personal meaning and resonate with her.   In 2025 she talked openly about her charitable giving and what it means to her in an article for the Sunday Times which can be read here.

J.K. Rowling is now well-known as a campaigner and advocate for women’s rights as well as a philanthropist. However, over the last 25 years, she has actively supported a wide range of other humanitarian causes. Her philanthropy has been carefully considered; she has always supported causes and organisations that have personal meaning and resonance and are borne out of her own experience, having begun her writing career in relative poverty as a single mother living on welfare benefits. In addition to her key charities listed in FAQ 1, she has historically supported:

• Gingerbread (formerly One Parent Families)
• Maggie’s Centres for Cancer Care
• MS Society Scotland
• Médecins Sans Frontieres
• Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) and The Red Cross
• ABF The Soldier’s Charity – to which she pledged her royalties for the first Robert Galbraith book, The Cuckoo’s Calling.
• Comic Relief – the two books she wrote in 2001 in aid of Comic Relief, Quidditch Through The Ages and Fantastic Beasts And Where to Find Them, raised several £ million for this charity which supports projects for children and families in the UK and abroad. Since 2026, her royalties from these books now go to Lumos.

J.K. Rowling gave a £1m donation to the Labour Party in 2008 but has not directly donated to political parties since.  She opposed the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, donated £1 million to the Better Together anti-independence campaign, and campaigned for the UK to stay in the European Union in the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum. She defines herself as an internationalist, “the mongrel product of this European continent”, and expressed concern that “racists and bigots” were directing parts of the Leave campaign. You can read her essays on these topics in In My Own Words.

She gave evidence to the Leveson judicial public inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the British press in 2011/12.

Despite the backlash and threats as a result of her views on gender, particularly online, J.K. Rowling has not been cancelled. Her books continue to be bestsellers; the Harry Potter franchise is constantly expanding its universal appeal with games, films, theme parks and experiences around the world; the stage play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which opened in London in 2016, continues to play in locations around the world; a new full-cast version of the audiobooks has been published to rave reviews and series one of the faithful TV adaptation of the Harry Potter books is to be aired at the end of 2026.

J.K. Rowling does not have cancer. This was an unfounded rumour online.

Beira’s Place is not anti-rights. It was established in 2022 to address an unmet need for a single sex support service for female survivors of male violence in Edinburgh.   Amnesty International has now apologised for the report, which was deeply offensive to Beira’s Place staff who work day in day out to support survivors, and to the women who need and use the service.  Beira’s Place continues to focus on the needs of the women who access the free service and, through the integrated work they do with partners such as Edinburgh’s Equally Safe Committee, remains committed to a vision where women and girls can live in a world free of sexual violence.

J.K. Rowling is not homophobic. She supports equal rights for people of all sexual orientation, and fervently defends the rights of same-sex-attracted people.

J.K. Rowling’s name appeared in the Epstein files as a result of Epstein being mistakenly added to the guest list for the opening of the play Harry Potter and The Cursed Child on Broadway in 2018. She never met Jeffrey Epstein or had anything to do with him.

J.K. Rowling does not have mold in her house. This incorrect online speculation was as a result of background imagery of a photo.