Rowling and Rugby

March 11, 2022 by 4 Comments

Wales is my adopted home, and it’s national sport is Rugby, so I was pleased to discover that J. K. Rowling was a fan. I first started playing rugby as a 10 year old for my local town, and I have since supported the national sides (both England and Wales) and the county of Cornwall. Rowling started watching and supporting her national side of Scotland after she married her husband Dr. Neil Murray.

“It’s not until I married a Scot that I was taken, not entirely willingly, to the rugby. And then I accidentally ended up enjoying the rugby. So there is hope for you. You can definitely convert.”

J. K. Rowling on Woman’s Hour, BBC Radio4, 28th April 2014

To find out more about Rowling and Rugby, join me after the jump.

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Filed Under: Cormoran Strike, Nick Jeffery

World Book Day (in the UK and Ireland)

March 8, 2022 by Leave a Comment

 

World Book Day (as observed in the UK and Ireland) is an oddity, like the World Series, in that the event is clearly not world wide. The aim of the Day is to foster a love of reading within children and raise money for Book Aid International. The most visible effect of this local-world event, outside the UK, to J. K. Rowling fans are the endless photographs on social media of tiny witches, wizards, house elves, and now Ickabogs and Pigs. To find more about the history and impact of this annual event within Britain, join me after the jump. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Nick Jeffery, Twitter

All J. K. Rowling’s Twitter Headers

March 7, 2022 by 5 Comments

During the weekend I was talking with our friends, the hosts of the Strike Ellacott Podcast, and Beatrice Groves about the valuable hints that J. K. Rowling’s twitter headers can give us about what she is working on. It was clear that we did not have a single repository of her twitter headers, nor a reliable indication of when they were current.

The Wayback Machine is an internet archive that stores webpages, and allows researchers to see the page as it was when the archive was captured. Using this tool I have captured what I believe is a complete set of all the Rowling twitter headers.

I consider this a work in progress- there are lots of missing dates in the archive, so the dates are the date of the first captured page. If you spot any errors or omissions, please let me know in the comments down below, and I will correct.

I would also like to build links to articles discussing and analysing the more interesting headers, again please let me know in the comments.

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Filed Under: Nick Jeffery, Potter Fandom, Twitter

Whether the Weather in the UK

February 19, 2022 by 1 Comment

The UK is currently recovering from the effects of Storm Eunice, reminding many fans of Cormoran Strike of the 2014 storms and subsequent floods that hampered the dash to Cornwall in Troubled Blood.

Fortunately this time the storms have not yet been coupled with much rain so flooding is not an issue, but 122 mph winds have been measured on the Isle of Wight. Just as in 2014 the storms have taken up at least half of the television news, and many yards of newsprint.

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Filed Under: Cormoran Strike, Nick Jeffery

The Gringotts Goblins and accusations of anti-Semitism (again)

January 6, 2022 by 6 Comments

On the 4th January, Newsweek broke the story that Jon Stewart a comedian and television host had accused J. K. Rowling of antisemitism due to the appearance of the Goblins in Harry Potter. Perhaps unsurprisingly in a tabloid story, within the first few paragraphs the article contradicts the headline:

Stewart said: “I do not think J.K. Rowling is antisemitic. I did not accuse her of being antisemitic. I do not think that the Harry Potter movies are antisemitic.”

This has not prevented multiple news outlets and twitter commentators of repeating the line that Rowling is an antisemite.

Dr. Beatrice Groves has convincingly rebutted the accusation in her Bathilda’s Notebook posts:  Rowling’s Goblin Problem? and The Sword Until Recently Known as Gryffindor’s. Very little can be added to this wonderful analysis, but trawling through twitter does throw up a couple of easily disprovable augments:

“There is a Star of David on the floor of Gringotts Bank!”

The Gringotts scene in Philosopher’s Stone was filmed in Australia House the home of the Australian High Commission in London. The building (and the floor) was completed in 1918 and the floor contains a Six pointed Star of Australia denoting the six states of the Commonwealth of Australia.

“J. K. Rowling wrote about ‘secretive, hook nosed, greedy bankers’, of course she was coding Jews!”

This is not the description that Rowling uses.

The goblin was about a head shorter that Harry. He had a swarthy, clever face, a pointed beard and, Harry noticed, very long fingers and feet.

J. K. Rowling has some history of calling out antisemitism where she sees it, and has been defended in this most recent attack by the Campaign Against Antisemitism.

I’ll leave the last word to Jon Stewart who it now appears is the unwilling hero of this new stick to beat Rowling with.

 

 

Filed Under: Beatrice Groves, Nick Jeffery