Audible Harry Potter Full Cast Editions

August 6, 2025 by Leave a Comment

Available for Pre-Order Now.

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The first instalment in HARRY POTTER: The Full-Cast Audio Editions hits Audible on 4th November. The subsequent audio-books 2-7 are to be released between December 2025 – May 2026. The new cast has also been announced, and with some surprises. The young actress who will be playing Hermione in the HBO television series will also play Hermione in Philosophers Stone, Chamber of Secrets and Prisoner of Azkaban.

  • Hugh Laurie is Albus Dumbledore
  • Matthew Macfadyen is Lord Voldemort
  • Riz Ahmed is Professor Snape
  • Michelle Gomez is Professor McGonagall
  • Arabella Stanton is Hermione Granger, (Book 1-3) she will also portray Hermione in the HBO series.
  • Frankie Treadaway is Harry Potter, (Book 1-3)
  • Max Lester is Ron Weasley, (Book 1-3)
  • Jaxon Knopf is Harry Potter, (Book 4-7)
  • Rhys Mulligan is Ron Weasley, (Book 4-7)
  • Nina Barker-Francis is Hermione Granger, (Book 4-7)

But the big surprise is that Hugh Laurie, who played Dr Gregory House in the hit television series House, has been cast as Albus Dumbledore.

I’m honoured to have been trusted with the keys to Albus Dumbledore, and thrilled to be able to take him around the track of this beautiful incarnation by Pottermore and Audible. I’m also deeply conscious of previous drivers Richard Harris, Michael Gambon, Jude Law and the iconic narrations by Jim Dale and m’colleague Sir Stephen Fry. Just below the horizon, but headed our way, is the rough beast John Lithgow, his hour come round at last. This is great company, and it’s a privilege to be among their number.

Hugh Laurie is best known internationally for playing the American Dr Gregory House, the titular lead in the hit medical series House.

To UK audiences however, he is best known as one half of the comedy double act Fry and Laurie partnering with Stephen Fry, the narrator of the UK Harry Potter audio book series. Here he is with (as he describes him) m’colleague Sir Stephen Fry, in the BBC television series Jeeves and Wooster.

 

Filed Under: Nick Jeffery

The JKR 60th Birthday Party Kanreki Celebration Index: Links and Blurb summaries of the 31 Lake and Shed Conversations of Rowling’s Life and Work in July 2025

August 5, 2025 by Leave a Comment

Last month, Nick Jeffery and I logged a marathon of Kanreki ‘Lake and Shed’ posts at our Substack site in celebration of Rowling’s life and work at her 60th birthday. Nick has been re-posting links to that work here at the weblog and now I have assembled below an easy-to-access-and-reference single place for readers to find any part of this fun series. Enjoy!

Introduction to the Kanreki Project

On 31 July 2025, Joanne Murray, aka J. K. Rowling and Robert Galbraith, celebrated her 60th birthday. This specific celebration is considered a ‘second birth’ in Japan or Kanreki because it is the completion of the oriental astrological cycle. To mark JKR’s Kanreki, 還暦, Dr John Granger and Nick Jeffery, both Nipponophiles, read through Rowling’s more than twenty published works and reviewed them in light of the author’s writing process, her ‘Lake and Shed’ metaphor. The ‘Lake’ she said in 2019 and 2024 is the source of her inspiration and the ‘Shed’ is the alocal place of her intentional artistry, in which garage she transforms the biographical stuff provided by her subconscious mind into the archetypal stories that have made her the most important author of her age.

Join us after the jump for the complete compendium of the Harry Potter, Cormoran Strike, Fantastic Beast, ‘Stand Alone’ stories, and Golden Thread posts! [Read more…]

Filed Under: C. S. Lewis, Casual Vacancy, Christmas Pig, Cormoran Strike, Cursed Child, Fourth Generation, Golden Threads, Literary Alchemy, Narrative Misdirection, Plot Points, Pregnancy Trap, Psychomachia, Ring Composition, Substack Post, The Ickabog

The HogPro Kanreki Project – Lake and Shed Readings Lost Child Golden Thread

August 4, 2025 by Leave a Comment

Dr John Granger and Nick Jeffery continue with their Lake and Shed readings into the fourth generation of Rowling scholarship. Join us for our celebration of Mrs Murray’s 60th birthday, and her Kanreki, 還暦, or calendar re-birth.

For the day before Rowling’s 60th birthday, Nick and John tackle by reader request the never before discussed subject of the Lost Child theme in the author’s more than twenty published works. They re-introduce the Golden Threads idea — see their Pregnancy Trap podcast or the two Kanreki series on this subject (here and here) — then they do a deep dive into the crowded waters of Lost Children in her work, and then they go out out on a high-wire to speculate about what specific spring in her Lake subconscious mind is responsible for this recurrent inspiration. Enjoy!

As a birthday gift of sorts, Nick and John close off their month-long celebration of Rowling-Galbraith’s life and work with a follow-up look at yesterday’s review of the ‘Lost Child’ Golden Thread that runs through her stories. After cataloging the almost forty ‘for instances’ taken from the opera omnia in the penultimate entry in this series, Nick and John ask, “So What?” How does the possibility that Rowling had an induced abortion and is sufficiently unsettled by it that it inspires many even most of her books at least in part make any difference in understanding their artistry and meaning?

Filed Under: Golden Threads, Nick Jeffery, Substack Post

Rowling Promises Future in Which Today’s Gender Identity Champions Claim They Were Always Gender Critical

August 4, 2025 by Leave a Comment

I am not an “OG TERF” as I am not a “feminist” by any stretch of the imagination.

I can, however, offer proof that I have from the beginning of this public controversy involving Rowling about Gender Identity vs Gender Critical stood with those saying sex is real. From my ‘Rowling Returns to Twitter with a Bang‘ post about Rowling’s 19 December 2019 tweet heard round the word in support of Maya Forstater: [Read more…]

Filed Under: Hog Pro Notes, Twitter

The HogPro Kanreki Project – Lake and Shed Readings of Beasts and Beadle

July 31, 2025 by Leave a Comment

Dr John Granger and Nick Jeffery continue with their Lake and Shed readings into the fourth generation of Rowling scholarship. Join us for our celebration of Mrs Murray’s 60th birthday, and her Kanreki, 還暦, or calendar re-birth.

Nick and John return to the books at a reader’s suggestion in order to give a Lake and Shed reading of the original Newt Scamander textbook, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Nick relays everything you need to know about the genesis of this work and John talks about Rowling’s comments to Stephen Fry in a 2022 interview about “archetypal” animals and the importance of understanding them because human beings are story-telling animals. Her discussion of the Lethifold and Niffler are especially challenging and illuminating. Enjoy!

Nick and John fulfill a reader request to discuss the book inside Deathly Hallows (one of three actually…), ‘Tales of Beedle the Bard,’ a text that Albus Dumbledore leaves Hermione in his will for her to read and apply to the Horcrux Hunt. Nick tells the story of Rowling’s creation of six hand-written copies as six-of-a-kind gifts for those who brought Harry Potter to life. John dives into the center story of the five tales, ‘The Hairy Heart,’ and tells the meaning of Harry’s heart to draw out what Rowling meant by describing Beedle as “the distillation” of the Hogwarts Saga.

Filed Under: Fourth Generation, Nick Jeffery, Substack Post