Patricio Tarantino last month found an unedited version of a 1998 ITN interview with J. K. Rowling at the Nicholson’s Cafe in Edinburgh and it is now available for viewing at TheRowlingLibrary YouTube channel. Oxford’s Beatrice Groves posted her first thoughts, ‘Harry Potter Dreaming,’ here yesterday. I had promised a transcript of the thirty-two minutes chat last week and here it is at last.

Caveat Lector! The man interviewing Rowling was not miked, so it was difficult at times to make out what he was saying. I tried to catch the flavor of Rowling’s stuttering, a marker of how new she was to this kind of exchange, but edited out most of the “y’know”s and “I mean”s. I think it is accurate enough for quotation but you might want to listen to it while reading the transcript to be sure the passage you want to quote is exact.

Enjoy the reading after the jump. Many thanks to Mr. Tarantino, to Professor Groves, and to my wife who did the initial typing of this text, a yeoman’s labor! [Read more…]

I’ve been waiting so long to tell you all about this #beyondthewand xxhttps://t.co/24008FUWwf pic.twitter.com/4C33A998di

— Tom Felton (@TomFelton) May 26, 2022

Tom Felton, who will turn 35 years old this September, has written his memoir, Beyond the Wand: The Magic and Mayhem of Growing Up a Wizard, that will be published this October. All the details can be found at MuggleNet’s discussion of the new book. The key details are:

Beyond the Wand is set to be published in hardcover and digitally on October 13 in the United Kingdom and October 18 in the United States. Ebury Spotlight is publishing it in the UK, with an anticipated page count of 308, while Grand Central Publishing will be the US publisher, with a planned page count of 272.

There will also be a simultaneously published audiobook version read by Tom, published by Penguin Random House Audio in the UK and Hachette Audio in the US.

I have read Felton’s Wikipedia page and been impressed by the number and variety of the roles he has played post Potter as well as by his music recordings. The MNet discussion of his book points out that other Potter players have written books, but neglects to say that this is the first autobiography per se from the stars of the show (Evanna Lynch‘s The Opposite of Butterfly Hunting: The Tragedy and The Glory of Growing Up is more an eating disorder and OCD survivor story and self-help guide than a memoir). I think we can expect, especially if Felton’s book sells well at Christmas-time this year, that Rupert, Emma, and Daniel will be courted by publishers with better offers than they’ve already received.

That none of the Terrible Trio have accepted this easy money testifies perhaps both to their financial security and to the excellence of their brand-gurus’ advice. I suspect that, unlike Felton, who is not as well known as the Harry, Ron, and Hermione players and could use the boost a book will create in recognition and like-ability, the three main players, beloved as their childhood roles more than as the people they have become, could injure their marketability with even a ghosted memoir.

Your thoughts? Has anyone at age 35 written an autobiographical volume that didn’t regret it?

Patricio Tarantino at TheRowlingLibrary.com has done it again. He has discovered more than half an hour of raw, unedited footage from an interview Rowling did in 1998 for a television spot that was only four minutes in its final version.

Beatrice Groves has written a commentary on the importance of this find for Potter Punditry that we will be posting here and I hope to have a full transcript up early next week for easy referencing and citation.

There are a lot of fun facts here and some significant revelations — she says point blank, for example, that Book 5 in the Hogwarts Saga wasn’t planned very well at that point, a note that was demonstrated as true when it took her three years to write it. The fun of it, though, for this fan was just seeing how relaxed and light she is in the landfall blessing of being able to write full time, negotiate with Hollywood types for film money (“Not DreamWorks or Disney — but don’t tell anyone! Cut that out!”), and enjoy talking with a reporter at Nicholson’s Cafe where she no longer writes.

No Dementors here or on the horizon… the good old days — when a child reader tells her she needs to brush her hair and The Woman Not Yet The Presence laughs and is intrigued by the idea. Enjoy!

Many thanks to Mr Tarantino and TheRowlingLibrary for this find and for posting it at their YouTube channel.