Katie Hopkins, perhaps the UK’s most outlandish stand-up comedian and shock-jock news commenter whose Instagram following is well over a million people, has landed in the United States to attend the inauguration of President Trump. She posted on her daily ‘Batshit Bonkers Britain’ (BBB) observations about a feminist protest march in DC this week (above) in a way that showcased her take no prisoners, suffer no nonsense commentary about the Gender Ideology true believers.

I couldn’t help but notice the correspondence between Hopkins’ post about a “transgender woman’s” claim to be suffering from polycystic ovary syndrome and Rowling’s December 2019 tweet that recreated her public image and blew up her status as a progressive icon:

A quick search shows that Rowling, as you probably expected, is not a Katie Hopkins fan. In 2017, when Hopkins reported that Britons were “cowed” following the knife attacks on Westminster, Rowling compared her to a famous American champion of appeasement. Hopkins has called London “Londonistan” and “Stab City” because of the attacks by machete wielding Muslims there. Per The Independent: [Read more…]

Before Paapa Essiedu was rumored to be the new Severus Snape in the HBO+/Bronte Studios adaptation of the Harry Potter novels for television, a rumor that set off the ‘Black Severus’ controversy a la ‘Black Hermione,’ there was already a casting outreach in the news, namely, that the film makers had contacted Mark Rylance’s representatives to begin a conversation about his playing Hogwarts Headmaster Albus Dumbledore.

I can think of three obvious and relatively indisputable reasons to be excited about this possibility:

(1) Mark Rylance is the Closest We’ll Ever Get to Richard Harris: Sir David Waters is, in brief, a legend in his own time, a thespian whose talent, skills, dedication to craft, and accomplishments, if brought to this teevee project, immediately elevates it to a much higher level than it would have otherwise. Essiedu has a host of qualifications but his involvement is usually described as a potentially “break out” role for him. Rylance is so well known and so well respected that landing him to play Dumbledore may be the breakout hiring choice for the series.

(2) Mark Rylance has the Necessary Bardish Quirks to Be Dumbledore: Just surveying his Wikipedia bio-page, I was delighted to find that  he has serious Shakespeare chops — first artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company for ten years — and that he isn’t a toady to popular opinion about the Bard or even to the RSC. The man staged an all-male production of Twelfth Night, for instance, as Shakespeare’s company had to (and he took the part of Olivia!) as well as all-female productions of Taming of the Shrew and Richard III, he has been an up-front proponent of the ‘Declaration of Reasonable Doubt’ about the authorship of the Shakespeare plays (a declaration that causes academics’ hair to catch on fire, believe me), and broke with the RSC after they took money from British Petroleum. Climate change, don’chano. From his immersion in Elizabethan lore (can you say alchemy? ley lines and crop circles?) to his being comfortable with uncomfortable ideas, Rylance is a natural, I think, for the actor taking on the Dumbledore part.

(3) Mark Rylance is Sufficiently Liberal (and Humble) that He Mutes TRA Criticism: Any actor or actress agreeing to participate in what may be a ten year project with the notorious TERF and transphobe bigot J. K. Rowling as an executive producer is going to be called out as a traitor to what President Biden called the “civil rights issue of our time.” I think Rylance will duck that charge. He was a firm supporter of Jeremy Corbyn right through all the anti-Semite accusations, for example, dropped association with the RSC over a political issue, and played Cleopatra, for heaven’s sake, in a production of Antony and Cleopatra. More to the point, the man is so famous for being humble and hard-working, disdainful of pomp and ego even at awards ceremonies, that attacking him as being a traitor to progressivism is going to be a very bad look, a disaster in optics for a group reeling since November in a deluge of bad news and worse appearances.

Check out ‘The Weird World of Mark Rylance’ and ‘Mark Rylance: “Playing other ethnicities on stage helps develop empathy”.’ I think he’s va great choice.

True confessions: I’d never heard of him until watching The Outfit in 2022 which led to my looking up Bridge of Spies. In a world in which professional actors rarely impress positively with their character and opinions, Sir David is exceptional, though I doubt very much we’d agree about much. I’m hopeful, even excited about his taking the role of Albus Dumbledore, if suspicious that a ten year commitment to a man devoted to stage craft is not in the works.

Two days ago I posted the ‘Hogwarts Professor Greatest Hits of 2024’ list with winners in the Most Popular, Best Month, Best Series, Best Podcasts, and Best Posts Not Written By Me categories as well as the post and Rowling Studies podcast I thought the most likely to be remembered as seminal, significant, or simply a signature or token of what this weblog deemed important last year in our niche of literary criticism. Yesterday Elizabeth Baird-Hardy, our Deputy Head Mistress, shared her ‘Long Overdue Thoughts and Thanks after the Wrath of Helene‘ and I know now, though it came on the last day of the calendar year, that it will be the 2024 post I remember most vividly in the years to come.

The two sure things of 2025 at Hogwarts Professor are that we will be discussing at length and in depth the new Cormoran Strike novel, The Hallmarked Man, in September and in March we will be reading and talking about Sunrise on the Reaping, the second Hunger Games prequel. Newcomers to this weblog will be forgiven if they think of our work here to be exclusively about J. K. Rowling’s artistry and meaning. Long time readers, though, are well aware of the work done here by Professor Baird-Hardy and myself about Suzanne Collins’ work; check out the Hunger Games Pillar Post and the Hunger Games category file for the exegesis of Collins’ neglected Gregor the Overlander series as well as her brilliant Mockingjay, the third of her Games trilogy and a work I think as good and in some ways better than Deathly Hallows. Elizabeth’s posts about these books, the film adaptations, as well as the music in both make her, frankly, with Lana Whited, the go-to expert on everything Hunger Games and I am very much looking forward to reading her insights about Sunrise on the Reaping in March.

Real quickly, we have three projects in the works for the coming year in addition to Sunrise on the Reaping and Hallmarked Man conversations. Having looked back at 2024, here is my sneak peek at three of this year’s coming attractions:

(1) A Hogwarts Professor conference on 30-31 July to celebrate both Mrs Murray’s 60th birthday and the exciting new developments in Rowling Studies;

(2) An online ‘Rowling Studies 101’ course, seven weeks in length, in which I will share a Lake and the Shed perspective on seven ‘Golden Threads’ that permeate everything Rowling writes and are key to grasping her artistry and meaning, her global popularity, and her controversial “biology based” feminist beliefs; and

(3) A series of new and updated books in a variety of formats to include audiobooks, bundled packages, and translations into Spanish and French.

That in addition to posts here on a daily basis and new Rowling Studies podcasts hosted by Nick Jeffery. I’m hopeful that 2025 will be the most exciting year in Hogwarts Professor’s 20+ year history, at least the busiest since the madhouse period following the publication of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Thank you for being the audience for what we do here, and, in advance, for sharing your comments, hopes, and critique of all we do!