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 $7.7billion 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.’