How tour guides spell trouble for Potter fans
HER tales of a boy wizard and his magical adventures have enchanted readers for a quarter of a century.
But author JK Rowling fears that fans of Harry Potter may also have fallen under the spell of tour guides who claim to have unlocked the real-life inspiration behind key names and locations from her bestselling books.
Tourist trails in Edinburgh routinely cite Victoria Street as the inspiration for Diagon Alley – the cobblestoned, supernatural thoroughfare featuring Ollivanders wand shop where Harry and his fellow apprentices stock up on their sorcery supplies.
Elsewhere, tombstones in Greyfriars Kirkyard are said to have provided the brainwave for some of her most famous characters.
In a message to her 14 million Twitter followers, however, Miss
Rowling insists any similarities are entirely coincidental as Diagon Alley was, like almost everything she has written, a work of pure fiction.
The mother of three said she was amazed at the tourist trade’s capacity for creative invention after one of her children came home from a walking tour to reveal a ‘ton of information that was news to me’.
Miss Rowling tweeted: ‘No real street inspired Diagon Alley, I’m afraid. It came out of my head! I’ve never seen 99 per cent of the places that claim to be the inspiration and
I’d never seen Victoria Street when I created DA.’ But she did reveal that, aside from real-life places that feature in the novels, such as King’s Cross and Charing Cross in London, one ‘wizarding world location’ does indeed come from real life.
She said: ‘I feel bad for the tourist boards saying it, but all (wizarding world) locations in Potter are entirely imaginary bar one – which is the most boring. I realised I’d given 4 Privet Drive exactly the same layout as the second house I lived in as a child (which did have a cupboard under the stairs). Dull but true.’ When asked whether Greyfriars Kirkyard had been the inspiration for the names of characters such as Professor McGonagall and Tom Riddle – Lord Voldemort’s real name – Miss Rowling replied: ‘Afraid not.
‘But I know the graveyard you are talking about because unbeknownst to me, one of my children was at a loose end one afternoon and went on one of those Potter walking tours with their best mate for a laugh. They came home with a ton of information that was news to me.’