UNITED KINGDOM: Ahead of Sotheby's auction of one of JK Rowling's fairytales "The Tales of Beedle the Bard", the bestselling author talks exclusively to Reuters Television

Record ID: 739417

  • Title: UNITED KINGDOM: Ahead of Sotheby's auction of one of JK Rowling's fairytales "The Tales of Beedle the Bard", the bestselling author talks exclusively to Reuters Television
  • Date: 13th December 2007
  • Summary: LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM (DECEMBER 10, 2007) (REUTERS) JK ROWLING ARRIVING AT SOTHEBY'S VARIOUS OF ROWLING POSING IN FRONT OF GLASS BOX CONTAINING THE BOOK BOOK 'THE TALES OF BEEDLE THE BARD' TWO-SHOT, JK ROWLING WITH REUTERS REPORTER MIRJA SPERNAL
  • Embargoed: 28th December 2007 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: United Kingdom
  • Country: United Kingdom
  • Topics: Entertainment
  • Reuters ID: LVACJG8GVGZD9AD9HY8X80BN7ENH
  • Story Text: The sixth book is out and now all that's left for Harry Potter fans is waiting for the movies to catch up. Saying good-bye to the boy wizard who became one of the best-loved children's books' characters is not an easy thing, not the least for his creator and best-selling author JK Rowling.
    To help the process, Rowling decided to hand-write and illustrate a fairytale story as a gift to six people - whose names she won't reveal - who were closely connected to Harry Potter:
    "The idea came really because I wanted to thank six key people who had been very closely connected to the Harry Potter series. These were people for whom a piece of jewellery just wasn't going to cut it, so I had the idea of writing them a book, handwriting and illustrating a book just for these six people and then I thought 'If I'm doing six, I really got to do seven and the seventh will be for this cause which is so close to my heart,'" she told Reuters Television in an exclusive interview.
    Rowling chose to raise money for children's charity 'Children's Voice' after reading about the plight of handicapped children in institutions in the Czech Republic in the British newspaper, 'The Sunday Times'. What she learned disturbed her so much that she chose to support the charity financially and produce a seventh book to be auctioned off to raise money:
    "I cannot imagine anyone more powerless than a child that is suffering from a disability, mental or physical, and is cut-off from any access to their families because of course the vast majority of these children are not orphans, they're often called orphanages but the overwhelming majority have family and parents and for various reasons they've been abandoned to institutions," she said.

    "The Tale of Beedle the Bard" is estimated to raise approximately 30,000 (GBP) when it is auctioned off at Sotheby's in London on Thursday (December 13). It also helped Rowling herself to begin to distance herself from Harry Potter.

    "I didn't expect it to be as therapeutic as it was , but these are, for anyone who doesn't know 'The tales of Beedle the Bard' is a book within the last Harry Potter book and a book that's closely connected to the 'denouement' of the whole series so it's a collection of fairytales for wizarding children and just continuing to write about the world was just a way of decompressing after seventeen years of Harry Potter" she said and added:
    "I probably won't say good-bye in any meaningful sense for a few more years because they are still making the films and I'm still very involved with the films which is wonderful. I will forever, I mean I know and you know that I will forever be known as the writer of Harry Potter and I am completely fine with that, Harry has given me more than I ever dreamed of and I am very grateful to him."
    The fifth movie 'Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix' has just come out on DVD and the last one has started shooting. Rowling is known for her hands-on approach when it comes to the films, having been instrumental in choosing Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe for the lead role.

    "I'm really happy. I think I have become happier and happier and part of the reason is that I'm doing the thing that I most want to do and I think that I got better at it actually because the last book was my favourite of the series, it was the best way to end."
    Rowling's already said that she won't stop writing, but just what her next project will be, is surrounded by secrecy: "I expect it'll be something else for children but I couldn't be sure , I really couldn't and the freedom of not knowing is something I'm saving at the moment."
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