Twenty years ago the world first met The Boy Who Lived – scrawny, scarred and bespeckled. Since then, Harry Potter and his many woes and adventures have revolutionised the world of children’s literature and has become the best-selling series in … Continue reading Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of J.K Rowling Originally Published in Print February 2019
●●○○○ Following the events of Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) is banned from international travel. These events, too, resulted in the dark wizard Grindelwald (previously Colin Farrell as the best part of that film; … Continue reading The Crimes of ‘The Crimes of Grindelwald’ This is a film short on fantastic beats.
I’ve written before about my frustration with J.K. Rowling’s white-washed, cishet-centric world view, and her performative allyship to the disenfranchised. The self-congratulatory liberal politics she’s expressed have always faded when her billionaire’s bottom line was in question, or when one … Continue reading J. K. Rowling & the TERF Receipts Delete your account.
Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them began life in 2001 as a Comic Relief fundraiser. It was a thin paperback intended to be a copy of Harry’s Hogwarts textbook, complete with scribbled in-joke marginalia supposedly penned by Harry, Ron … Continue reading Not-So-Fantastic Queerbaiting and Where to Shove Your Bad Racial Politics There’s been fan outcry (because of course there has). Rowling doesn’t care. But is anyone shocked?
The concept of The Great American (or Irish, or Canadian, or…) Novel is misleading. For a book to mean anything to one person or demographic, it must inevitably leave another cold. This is why you’re a thousand times more likely … Continue reading After All This Time… A generation, nineteen years later.
Harry Potter’s sprawling, magical universe is one so ubiquitous it’s easy to imagine that all of us have had some brush with it, whether that’s reading the books, watching the movies, or just catching glimpses of the cultural phenomenon left … Continue reading Harry Potter and the Legacy of Fandom
Recently I came across a second hand PC copy of Harry Potter: Quidditch World Cup in a charity shop. The game had formed an integral part of my childhood, so I spent three euro for old times’ sake. What struck … Continue reading Purchasing Problems
Forget everything you’ve heard about judgmental, self-righteous vegans. For Evanna Lynch, it all comes down to one thing- compassion. Lynch visited the Hist on Friday to deliver an impassioned, but not preachy, speech about the importance of going vegan. I … Continue reading Interview with Evanna Lynch
Instead of worrying that children will be exposed to dangerous issues, we should celebrate books that introduce them to reality in mature and relatable ways. Continue reading Battle of the Books