J K Rowling

J K Rowling0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

J K Rowling0:08

The programme was originally broadcast in the year two thousand, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:31

My castaway this week is a writer. She carries in her mind a unique and extraordinary world. So far she's told us four stories about it and plans a further three. They've already made her a millionaire. She's sold a total of 40 million copies in as many countries. It's a remarkable achievement for a single mother of 35 who dreamed up the whole thing on a delayed train journey to King's Cross. She's the author of the Harry Potter books, J.K. Rowling, Joanne Rowling. JK, in case the boys didn't like reading what a woman had written, according to a publisher, very sexist thought. It was, I argued.

J K Rowling1:05

Very sexist thought.

Presenter1:08

And um then w what it came down to was I was I was so grateful to be published, they could have called me anything. Well quite. They could have called me Graham if they'd wanted, really.

J K Rowling1:14

Thank you.

Presenter1:16

I put up a token resistance and then in the end I said, All right.

J K Rowling1:17

I could have

Presenter1:19

It is a wonderful story, yours as well as Harry's. It must seem as magical as his. Do you do you still have to pinch yourself?

J K Rowling1:26

We still have to pick.

Presenter1:27

Yes, yes. I I feel that I've spent three years in a state of shock. What about your friends from the past? You know, they all come out of the woodwork at moments like this, don't they? But I mean, are they amazed that it happened to you and not one of them?

J K Rowling1:39

Although

Speaker 31:42

No.

Speaker 21:42

But a bit

Presenter1:44

Um

Presenter1:45

My my closest long term friends always knew that I wrote, so definitely if you'd said to them, Which of you will end up a best selling author? I think they would have still been very surprised about the best selling bit, but they probably would have said, Oh, Joe.

Presenter2:00

My old friends from Exeter found it quite hysterical that I was given an honorary degree. Why? There was a suggestion that.

Presenter2:07

Rather than give me an honorary degree they should put an engraved ashtray in the coffee bar. They thought that would be more appropriate.

Presenter2:14

How close to the truth is the image that's been put forward of you when you were writing these books? We all have this image of the rather down-at-heel single mother pushing the buggy around. Sitting in a cafe. Because her flat was unheated. Yeah, all that.

J K Rowling2:24

Sitting in a cafe.

J K Rowling2:26

Because her

J K Rowling2:27

Yeah.

Presenter2:29

Like most newspaper stories, I think, it's about fifty percent true and fifty percent embroidery. It's true that I lived entirely on benefits for nine months, and mostly on benefits for about eighteen months. It's true that I wrote in cafes with my daughter sleeping next to me. And that sounds very romantic, but of course it's not at all romantic when you're living through it.

Presenter2:51

The embroidery comes where they say, well, her flat was unheated. I wasn't in search of warmth. I was just in search of good coffee, frankly, and not having to interrupt the flow by getting up and making myself more coffee. I did also meet an American journalist who said to me, So you wrote your first novel on napkins? And I mean, I laughed myself stupid. I said, No, I could afford paper. Tell me about your first record. My first record is The Beatles Come Together. My parents were very young when they had me. They were both twenty, and they had all the Beatles records. And so I grew up listening to them. Against very stiff competition, I've chosen Come Together.

Speaker 33:27

Production heat

Speaker 33:30

War is come.

Speaker 33:33

Oh no sideboy, he wants spider clown

Speaker 33:38

Beep!

Speaker 33:39

Down below his knee.

Speaker 33:44

You can feel his disease.

Speaker 33:49

Come together.

Presenter3:57

The Beatles and Come Together. I've heard writers before, Jo Ann, say that stories come into their mind and demand to be written. Is that how it was with Harry? Absolutely, it was, yes. I was twenty five when I had the idea for Harry.

J K Rowling4:05

Is that

Presenter4:10

And I had been writing if you include all the teenage embarrassing rubbish for years and years. And I had never been so excited by an idea in my life. I'd um abandoned two novels for adults prior to that.

Presenter4:24

Actually the second novel I was still writing when I had the idea for Harry and for six months I tried to write them both simultaneously and then Harry just took over completely. And you knew him the minute I mean did you know all about him the minute he came?

J K Rowling4:33

Um

Presenter4:34

I knew that his parents had been killed. I knew he was a wizard and he didn't know he was. It wasn't until I got off the train.

Presenter4:43

that I started going back and thinking, well, how can he not know? And what happened to his parents? And it took me five years to work out this very long plot. And and so you know you knew gradually, but quite quickly, his whole world. You knew he was going to go to Wizards on the train.

J K Rowling4:56

But quite

Speaker 34:59

It's on that train.

Presenter5:01

What did I invent on that train? Lots of the characters you meet at the school. Uh Dumbledore. I thought up lots of the ghosts. I imagined the moving staircases and I started working out what they'd study.

Presenter5:14

So loads and loads of detail.

Presenter5:16

But not really the narrative that we're talking about. And Hermione and Ron, the friendship. Hermione came for Ron.

J K Rowling5:17

And Hermione and Rock

J K Rowling5:19

Um

Presenter5:21

And that Harry had these he lived with this nasty aunt and uncle who was a family. Oh yes, I knew he lived with this aunt. They're wonderful.

J K Rowling5:26

I knew he lived.

J K Rowling5:28

Revolt

Presenter5:30

I love them. They're such fun to write. Because that's the point, isn't it? It's all in your head. You know exactly what you've written for, as I say, another three to come.

Speaker 35:30

I love it.

Speaker 35:35

No exactly.

Speaker 35:36

That's it.

Presenter5:38

Do you have files as well? I mean, like they do here at Radio 4 on the archers.

J K Rowling5:41

Uh

J K Rowling5:41

Uh

J K Rowling5:42

And I really hope

Presenter5:43

PA and my friends are hearing you say that, they would laugh themselves hoarse at the idea of me being organised enough to have files. What I've got is cardboard boxes.

Speaker 35:50

Uh

Presenter5:52

Full of unsorted notes. It's very organized in my head and I think, Oh, I know what was going to happen here. I'll have to go and look in cardboard box number three because I know the notebook's in there and I go and ferret and his disc world, he gets caught out all the time, I think, talking to his readers on the internet.

J K Rowling6:00

In there.

J K Rowling6:02

The big

J K Rowling6:08

I have

Presenter6:11

was Sam Children.

Presenter6:13

Literally across continents have written and said, Why hasn't Marcus Flint left the school? He was in the fifth year when Harry started and he should have gone by book four. And so I wrote back to them all and said, Well, Marcus Flint's so stupid he had to do another year. Yeah, either that or I made a mistake. But I prefer answer A.

J K Rowling6:27

Now

Presenter6:32

You've planned all seven books, as we say, which take Harry through Hogwarts Wizard School to his coming of age at eighteen.

J K Rowling6:37

Mm hong.

Presenter6:41

How early on then did you conceive it as that kind of from the beginning? From the train. I thought, no, this would be yes. I thought I'd want to see him through school. And again, another journalist said to me,

Speaker 26:45

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 26:46

Hmm.

J K Rowling6:48

This would be

Presenter6:54

That's very arrogant to plan a world dominant. I was going to say it is. And I said, but when you've got absolutely nothing, you can plan what you like. You can plan what you like. I mean, you can sit on a train and plan world domination if you want to. It might make you a very sad individual. But

J K Rowling6:56

It's presumptuous.

Presenter7:08

I wasn't telling anyone about it. It was just in my head.

Presenter7:12

Next record.

Presenter7:13

After the Beatles, my favourite

Presenter7:15

The band would have to be the Smiths.

Presenter7:17

I just love them for the guitar.

Presenter7:20

Johnny Marr's guitar, I play guitar, extremely badly, I would love to be able to play like him and for the lyrics, which are so witty.

Speaker 37:40

And now I know how dronal goes Now I know how dronal love goes

Speaker 37:48

As the plane flows to Romano Than I'm hearing it's got to

Presenter7:55

Big Mouth Strikes Again, performed by The Smiths. Tell me about Jo Ann Rowling The Child, what was she like?

Presenter8:02

A real daydreamer, very vivid fantasy life, very freckly, squat, thick national health glasses.

Presenter8:11

Bit of a know-it-all. Underneath very nervous. Very, very insecure. It's been said that Hermione is a bit based on you. It sounds like she is, actually. She is. That was conscious, yeah. Yes, I was. My sister would very much vouch for that. My sister's um two years younger than me.

J K Rowling8:21

So she is actually.

J K Rowling8:24

I will see.

Presenter8:31

And I think she suffered on occasion.

Presenter8:34

But always reading. Oh, yeah. Very yeah. What sort of constantly? Anything. Absolutely anything.

J K Rowling8:38

Constantly.

Presenter8:41

Well, the great thing my parents did

Presenter8:44

Nothing in the house was banned, so I l I read a lot of um adult novels young, but I also read Enid Blyton.

Presenter8:52

And I read Barry Hines and, you know, Noel Stretfield and then pretty much anything else. Did anyone in your family tell stories or write what you know, where where is it? Can you trace it back anywhere, this talent?

J K Rowling9:01

Oh

Presenter9:05

One of my grandfathers was a hu was a huge story teller, but not in the sense of writing novels.

Presenter9:11

He had a very rich fantasy life. Oh, really? Yeah, Stanley. Stanley used to go. Oh, yes. But beautiful Porkies.

J K Rowling9:15

Yeah.

Presenter9:19

He used to go out in his shed and invent things. But the other thing is a sense of family seems to be important to you. I mean, if Harry Potter has anything to go by, you know, he's this orphan, as we say, brought up by a horrid aunt and uncle who loves being invited to stay with his friend Ron, who's part of this huge family, the Weasleys, you know, very poor, but, you know, wonderfully together. Very happy.

J K Rowling9:38

Very good.

Speaker 29:39

Very snitch, yeah.

Presenter9:41

I think there is

Presenter9:42

An innate desire in every child to have a family.

Presenter9:45

Harry goes out basically and makes his own family.

Presenter9:50

I'm not sure. I think I possibly put some of my feelings about my mother's illness into, Harry, in that sometimes home wasn't

Presenter9:58

It was a difficult place to be because my mother was very ill. That's not to say we didn't all love each other very much. But um when someone is very ill She had M S. She had M S. I I do want to emphasise she did have a galloping form of it.

J K Rowling10:07

She had MS.

Presenter10:12

Someone can have multiple sclerosis and have a normal lifespan and not be tremendously affected. My mother was unlucky and she died at forty-five. So, um And you were what then? You were twenty twenty? I started writing Harry six months before she died, so she never knew.

J K Rowling10:23

I was twenty-five.

Presenter10:31

Record number three. Um there was no classical music in my parents' house. None. And I'm entirely self-educated on it. I go through these phases of self-improvement. And um I had a major one in my early twenties and went out and bought all all this classical music.

Presenter10:47

This is Beethoven's Appassionata.

Presenter10:51

When I was writing madly, I also went through a period when I was temping in offices.

Presenter10:56

And to stop people talking to me, which sounds horrible, I used to put this piece of music on a tape, put in my earplugs and pretend that I was audio typing. Really, this is all my rich fantasy life coming out. I was sitting there pretending that I was playing this on a on a stage in a beautiful, beautiful sort of ball gown, um pretending I was a pianist.

Presenter12:06

Wilhelm Kempf playing the end of the third movement of Beethoven's piano sonata in F minor the Apacionata. My God, if you could type to that, you could type that in the middle of the morning.

J K Rowling12:13

That's how I taught you.

Presenter12:16

Let me uh ask you about the language, because you did French and classics at Exeter, and obviously th you have an enormous enjoyment of words for their own sake. A lot of spells like engorgio to make someone swell up or whatever. What about Dumbledore, the paternalistic headmaster? Wonderful name. Dumbledore came straight out of Thomas Hardy. Dumbledore is.

J K Rowling12:19

And

J K Rowling12:22

But it's for their own s.

J K Rowling12:25

Yeah.

Presenter12:36

used in the Mayor of Casterbridge as a dialect word meaning bumblebee, and I loved that word.

Speaker 212:45

Parcel matter

J K Rowling12:46

Uh

Presenter12:51

Parcel mouth

Presenter12:52

It used to mean I think it was a cleft palate, so it was this slang word, now obsolete, for someone who had been born with a malformed mouth.

Presenter13:02

I it's it's it's as though subconsciously for years I had been preparing for writing Harry Potter because I had just been storing weird words for for the just as you would collect

Presenter13:12

Useless objects, really.

Presenter13:15

You had various jobs after university, from Amnesty International, secretarial jobs, as you say, teaching.

J K Rowling13:18

And oh

J K Rowling13:20

Remember

Presenter13:21

And it was that, it was teaching English as a foreign language that that took you to Portugal just after the death of your mother. Is that where Harry really took over then?

J K Rowling13:23

Which then

Presenter13:31

He'd he was already fairly well established. I went over there with um in a corner of my suitcase there was

Presenter13:39

pile of uh paper, some handwritten, some typed, and I would say it was about six inches deep. That was Philosopher's Stone as it then was. And when I came back I had probably three times that amount. But in the meantime you got married. Yes, and in the meantime um I met my ex husband. We got married.

Speaker 213:50

In the meantime you got married.

J K Rowling13:52

Uh

Presenter13:55

And I had a baby. So it was an eventful little trip abroad. So you were writing at the same time as I was writing all through pregnancy.

J K Rowling14:01

I was writing all through pregnancy.

Presenter14:03

And teaching and procreation going on here. It was a fertile summer.

J K Rowling14:05

Yeah.

Presenter14:09

It was, yes. Tell me about the next piece of music, because I think that nets in with it. It does. This is Tchaikovsky's violin concerto in D major. One of my favourite pieces of music, but

Presenter14:22

Also, it I associate it very, very, very strongly with that summer, with being pregnant, because I actually bought this for my ex-husband's birthday.

Presenter14:31

and we played it daily and um I have told my daughter that this was probably the first piece of music she ever heard. She's totally unimpressed with that, doesn't like it at all. So I it it just has this very strong association with me writing and swelling and then becoming a mother.

Presenter15:47

Hyung Wa Chung playing part of the first movement of Tchaikovsky's violin concerto in D major with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andrei Previn. So, Jo Ann Rowling, you gave birth to a novel and a daughter and you called her Jessica. Perhaps you should have called her her Maloney. No, I couldn't be that cruel. But why Jessica? Because of Jessica Mitford.

Presenter16:08

I first heard of Jessica Mitford from a great aunt of mine.

Presenter16:11

And she started telling me this story about this girl who'd run away from home and had the audacity to charge a camera to her father's account before she did it.

Presenter16:19

And she was telling me this clearly to make me think, goodness, how dreadful. But I thought, wow, how cool.

Presenter16:26

Jessica's, what, seven now? Isn't she? But when she was five months old, your marriage broke up and you came back to Britain. So it seems to be an awful lot happened to you really in the early nineteen nineties, of course. You could say that.

J K Rowling16:27

Seven shoes.

J K Rowling16:31

Mm-hmm.

J K Rowling16:35

Yeah.

Speaker 316:35

Uh

Presenter16:38

Well, and also your mother died then as well. And there are creatures in your third book called Dementors who leech the happiness out of people, really, don't they?

J K Rowling16:47

Pink or mid.

Presenter16:50

And obviously again when one reads it one knows that you know about it's not sadness. It is absolutely hitting the bottom, isn't it? There is a great difference between sadness, which is a healthy emotion I think, and depression, which um which is more of an absence of emotion. That's how I remember it and I did go through a period of depression.

J K Rowling16:53

It's not sadness. It is a

Presenter17:10

I think, as you say, a lot had happened to me not all of it bad, but all change is supposed to be very stressful, and I had been through bereavement.

Presenter17:20

I'd had a baby best thing that ever happened to me.

Presenter17:23

But I'd stopped working not a good thing and suddenly I felt Ah How did I get here? This wasn't supposed to happen.

Presenter17:30

So Jessica would have been, I should think, what about three when you put that first manuscript into the envelope and sent it off to the publisher, having done all that schlepping round the cafes and so on. Into the envelope it went, off it went.

J K Rowling17:35

into the envelope and send

J K Rowling17:38

Mm-hmm.

J K Rowling17:40

It's fun.

Presenter17:44

And back came a very prompt response saying no, thank you.

Presenter17:48

And then I got another red action letter. The funny thing is, they didn't upset me because I I had that back against the wall mentality. I've got to try now.

Presenter17:58

By this time I was on this teaching course, I knew that I was going to have incredibly limited time to write.

Presenter18:04

And I just thought, well, even if what you end up with is a file full of rejection letters, you know you tried. So how long before somebody said yes, please? The second agent the first agent sent me a letter back saying, My client list is full.

J K Rowling18:11

Exactly.

Presenter18:16

Literally.

Presenter18:17

No, dear madam, and no, yours sincerely, and I if I sound like I bear a grudge, I do. Because I'd sent my manuscript in this beautiful plastic folder, and I was broke, and I didn't have five pounds to spend on a plastic folder. And she sent it back without the folder, and she wrote, No, thank you, and with a handwritten PS, the folder you sent would not fit in the envelope. And I just felt, well, buy bigger envelopes then.

Presenter18:40

I was furious. I wonder if she remembers. I doubt it. Kicking herself out. So finally, you know, somebody said, yeah, it's blue. Well, yep. I got an agent first. I got Christopher Little first.

J K Rowling18:48

Blue.

Presenter18:52

And after a year of trying, Bloomsbury took me. Can you remember the feeling in that moment? Best, the best. After the birth of Jessica, I really mean this, that was the best moment of my life. And then the Americans started. The American, yes, that was that was interesting. Um that was four or five months after the book came out in Britain.

Presenter19:15

I'm at home one evening.

Presenter19:17

and um the phone rang, and it was Christopher, my agent.

Presenter19:21

and he said there's an auction going on in America.

Presenter19:24

For a split second I truly thought, well, why are you telling me that? I didn't associate auction and my book.

Presenter19:31

And then I realized what he meant.

Presenter19:33

And I said, An an auction? and he said yes, and they're up to a certain amount of money, and the certain amount of money was double what he had predicted we would get. And then he phoned me up

Presenter19:44

Two hours later, and said, Okay, one of the publishers are dropped out, there are two in there.

Presenter19:48

and they're up to this and then finally, about eleven o'clock at night, he called me and said, Okay, you're with Arthur Levine Books, and they're giving you and it was a six figure sum in dollars.

Presenter20:00

What did that mean to you? It was security, it meant we could get out of rented accommodation, but it also sent me into an absolute panic.

Presenter20:09

Part of my brain saying, Come on, you know, you can buy a house, we we don't have to worry anymore, everything's much better.

Presenter20:15

And the other part of me was saying

Presenter20:17

Oh my God They're gonna find me out The next book won't be as good.

Presenter20:21

I felt as though everyone was suddenly watching every word I wrote, and I was very frightened.

Presenter20:26

I got I didn't sleep that night.

Presenter20:28

I just kept walking round and round and round the flat second.

Presenter20:33

That moment when you know you don't have to worry any more after everything you've been through. Yeah, I mean I I basically sat down and thought I can afford to write and maybe teach part-time.

J K Rowling20:37

Uh

Presenter20:42

And that meant everything to me, you see, because before prior to that moment I kept thinking, is writing just your little self indulgence? Do you have the right

J K Rowling20:42

Yeah.

Presenter20:52

To keep your daughter poorer than maybe she should have been by continuing to make time for writing. Shouldn't you be out there working at anything and saying goodbye to the writing?

Presenter21:02

Record number five.

Presenter21:03

Okay, this is Everybody Hurts by R. E. M. A very dear friend of mine bought me this album for Christmas, the Christmas after I'd left my ex-husband, and I played this song repeatedly, corny perhaps, but true, um and it helped.

Presenter21:18

And what I find remarkable about this song is the simplicity of l the language. It's very difficult to write very simply about profound emotion.

Presenter21:28

And Paul McCartney did it with yesterday.

Presenter21:31

Just this very simple, beautiful lyric, and I feel the same way about this record.

Speaker 321:37

It's time to sing along When your day is night

Speaker 321:48

Real night night.

J K Rowling21:50

Yeah.

Speaker 321:56

Think you've had too much

Speaker 322:01

The slide

Presenter22:07

Everybody Hurts by REM. It's interesting that in introducing that you mentioned yesterday and all the simplicity of that as well, Everybody Hurts. I wonder if that isn't part of the secret behind the success of Harry Potter, that it is actually very simple. It does touch into an awful lot of things we know about. Orphan children, absolutely.

J K Rowling22:28

Merit boarding subsidies.

Presenter22:30

There is a reason why the orphan is a recurring figure in children's literature.

J K Rowling22:34

Picture.

Presenter22:36

The children are instantly on that hero side or heroine side. You haven't got your mum and dad. But more than that, it's very liberating to be an orphan.

Presenter22:44

You don't have to keep anyone happy.

Speaker 322:46

Hmm.

Speaker 222:46

Yeah.

Presenter22:47

And

Presenter22:48

I think even happy children

Presenter22:51

Love to be able to explore through affectional orphan.

Presenter22:55

the possibilities of that situation. You have some critics, not many, and they say, you know, that that that orphan thing and the boarding school thing and so on it is a is a cliche. That's what they say. And one I think one of them said Billy Bunter on broomsticks and

Presenter23:09

Oh, yes. I don't think it's a very good idea. It's fascinating to me that that there are so many things that ring bells and yet you are this phenomenal

J K Rowling23:11

I don't think it's accurate, but I do think it's a funny line.

Presenter23:21

Publishing success.

J K Rowling23:23

And I wonder if it is.

Presenter23:32

One

Presenter23:33

are people who believe passionately in the boarding school system.

Presenter23:37

and the other group are practising witches.

Presenter23:41

I think rarely has anyone united those two groups.

Presenter23:45

And

Presenter23:46

I have to say I'm not on either of their sides.

Presenter23:50

I didn't go to boarding school.

Presenter23:52

In terms of fiction, it's great because everything can happen at night and that is exactly what it's about.

J K Rowling23:55

Uh

Speaker 223:55

No night

Presenter24:00

If you spend a minute looking at what I have to do to get Harry to the places he needs to be, it's apparent he really has to stay at school at night, and that's why it's a boarding school. And as for the practising witches, I d I don't believe in magic in that sense. People come up to me for signing cues and whisper, I'm trying the spells.

Speaker 324:08

Yeah.

Presenter24:18

Do they really know that's happened yet?

Presenter24:20

It has made you incredibly wealthy. How are you coping with that? I don't want to sound too sorry for him, but on the other hand I think from so very little to so very much so quickly, from anonymity to public property, and I know you don't like that bit of it very much, but how are you coping with all of that?

J K Rowling24:25

No, I don't think.

Speaker 224:26

How's that?

J K Rowling24:27

I'm sorry.

J K Rowling24:31

So quick.

Presenter24:40

People have said it's like winning the lottery, and in a sense it is, because it it certainly was that unexpected.

Presenter24:48

And yet I do know that I worked for it.

Presenter24:50

I didn't work in the expectation of getting it, but there is a direct correlation between a lot of hard work and the money. Now that's not to say that I deserve that amount of money. I say there's a neat link into the next song.

Presenter25:05

Uh it's um

Presenter25:07

It can be difficult.

Presenter25:09

Okay, let's have this one. Yes, I see what you mean. Marianne Faithful. Oh, this is one from one of my favourite albums, which is Broken English. And this is Marianne Faithful singing Guilt, an emotion I am not unfamiliar with. And but I just I just love this song.

Speaker 225:26

I feel good.

Speaker 225:28

I feel guilty.

Speaker 225:31

Though I know I done no wrong or feel guilty

Speaker 225:37

I feel good.

Presenter25:49

Marianne Faithful and Guilt. Um you've said when you finished the seven books, Jo Ann, in sort of two thousand three, two thousand four, w whenever it is, and we'll have certainly had one film by then of Harry and maybe more that you will carry on writing, but this is the interesting bit, I think. I don't know if I would want to publish again.

J K Rowling25:57

Yeah.

Presenter26:08

But that was said at a very low M

J K Rowling26:08

But that was so detailed.

Presenter26:10

I will be writing until I lose all my marbles, I know that.

Presenter26:13

But there have been times when being published or being very much in the public eye

Presenter26:20

Has been

Presenter26:22

Not an enjoyable experience, shall we say. That's why we get Rita Skeeter, the hackette from the Daily Prophet, who has a quick quill loved writing. She must quickly tell for the first time ever

J K Rowling26:26

Williams

J K Rowling26:29

Quills quills.

J K Rowling26:31

She must quit in truth.

Presenter26:35

When I

Presenter26:36

raised my pen metaphorically to introduce Rita. I thought, whoa, wait a moment, they'll think this is your response. But in fact it wasn't.

Presenter26:45

Rita wasn't called Rita back then, she was actually called Bridget.

Presenter26:49

And she

Presenter26:50

was cut from Philosopher's Stone. I cut her. And originally I had when Harry first walked into the um leaky cauldron, I had Rita.

Presenter26:58

rushing towards him and trying to get an interview.

Presenter27:00

But I cut her because by the time I came to do my final draft of Philosopher's Stone, you know, I really had planned all seven books and I thought, no, the right moment for her to arrive is Bang Centre in book four when the weight of Harry's fame really starts to oppress him.

Presenter27:14

And then look what happened to me in the interim. So I pick up my pain. And I I went to p introduce Rita and I thought, everyone's going to say and then I thought, well, you know what, if you second guess them all the time,

J K Rowling27:17

My pang became aggressive.

Presenter27:25

Then you're lost. So just bang her in and enjoy her. And I won't lie, I probably enjoyed writing her much more.

Presenter27:31

What might you write, then, after you've finished Harry? Might you write something completely different? I might do. Adult? I might do. It really depends

Presenter27:42

What the next great idea I have is a great idea in the sense to visit you. What's going to come next? What about life other than writing? I mean, having achieved your biggest ambition, which was to be a published writer, done that, thirty-five years old.

J K Rowling27:52

And we used to

Presenter27:56

What else? You've got one daughter. What about those big happy families you find so attractive?

Presenter28:02

Would I like to have more children? Yes, I'd love to have more children. But if it doesn't happen

Presenter28:07

I don't think anyone could look at me and say

Presenter28:09

What a shame. But does be does does it being so famous make it difficult to find personal relationships? I think it can have a distorting effect on your relationships.

Presenter28:21

I was intrigued.

Presenter28:23

By the comment of a friend of mine.

Presenter28:24

Um I've known her for about two years now, and when she first met me she didn't have a clue about Harry Potter. And we got friendly, as you do, on the school run, and I had told her I was a children's writer, but

Presenter28:35

She'd, you know, sort of said oh, really. And then one day I met her in the playground and she was r quite different.

Presenter28:41

and she'd realized. And she said to me

Presenter28:44

You know, if I'd known, I don't think I'd even have spoken to you.

Presenter28:48

She said, Well, because I would have thought that you would have thought that I only wanted to speak to you be which was absolute nonsense because her son and my daughter are best friends, so I wouldn't have thought that at all. How does Jessica cope with it all? I mean, she's obviously about seven years old, goes to school. I think in one sense the blessing is that she was too young when it started to really notice a difference. She's kind of grown up with it with this as the norm. Sure, but it's how the other kids are. Yeah, absolutely. The first big shock was getting to school and finding herself surrounded by twelve-year-olds.

J K Rowling29:02

I think

J K Rowling29:12

Yeah.

Speaker 329:12

Uh

J K Rowling29:12

So

J K Rowling29:13

Yeah, absolutely.

Presenter29:19

Saying, Does your mum really write Harry Potter? But she's a feisty little thing, my daughter. And but do you get children coming to the house, perhaps?

Speaker 229:24

Uh

Presenter29:27

Looking for a secret manuscript. I mean, there was so much hype before you published the label. I never want to live through that sort of tension again. I really think book seven.

Speaker 229:31

That was

Presenter29:37

I think I'll just go go abroad or something. But you've written the final chapter, the final book.

J K Rowling29:41

Goodness.

Presenter29:43

Older children have come round to the house and made big jokes about going into my study and finding it. And I stopped finding it quite so funny after a while and I've it's now in a very safe place.

Presenter29:53

Number seven. Okay, so I'm sitting there thinking, What do you really want on a desert island? And I wanted one really good loud one. Jimi Hendrix with All Along the Watch Tower.

Speaker 330:21

There must be some kinda way outta here Said a joker to the thief There's too much confusion

Speaker 330:35

I can't get no relief.

Speaker 330:38

Businessman there will drink my wine.

Speaker 330:44

Plowman, dig my earth.

Speaker 330:47

None will level on the mind. Nobody up in this world.

Speaker 331:13

No reason to get excited The baby college bold

Speaker 331:20

There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.

Speaker 331:29

But you and I've been through that.

Speaker 331:34

And this is not our favorite

Speaker 331:38

So let us start talking falsely now The hours getting lazy

Presenter32:06

Jimi Hendrix Experience and All Along the Watch Tower. So it's nice and noisy from time to time on your desert island. Wonderful visit Jimi Hendrix.

J K Rowling32:12

What is opposite you know, Hendrix?

Presenter32:14

I think I'd enjoy it for a little bit. I'd really love it. Not having anyone around and people trying to contact me all the time would be a problem of the past and and then after give me a week maximum and I would start to desperately miss people. And you could hack it generally. You could kind of get life in the middle of the morning, could I? I'm not a practical person at all.

J K Rowling32:31

Well I'm doing

Presenter32:35

But I do think I have a fairly strong will to survive, so that probably would see me through. I'd probably be rescued three years later, very skinny, and not terribly healthy, but I probably still would be there.

Presenter32:45

Last record.

Presenter32:46

This is probably my favourite piece of music.

Presenter32:51

In the World, On Its Own Merits, and This Is uh Mozart's Requiem in D minor.

Presenter33:51

The Vienna Singferine performing the Annus De from Mozart's Requiem in D minor with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Herbert von Kerian. If you could only take one of those eight records, Joanne, which one would you take? It's going to have to be the Tchaikovsky, just because it's got this very strong association with my daughter. Your fertile period. Very fertile period, yes. What about your book as well as the Bible and Shakespeare?

Speaker 234:11

Yeah.

J K Rowling34:11

Yeah.

Presenter34:15

Um well this caused me an awful lot of difficulty, but finally

Presenter34:21

I decided that as for my luxury I'd like unlimited paper and a pen, please.

Presenter34:27

That I will be writing stories to read, and you have given me Shakespeare and the Bible.

Presenter34:32

And literature is great, but I really do want to live, so I've asked for the SAS Survival Guide, please.

Presenter34:39

J. K. Rowling, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island is.

J K Rowling34:51

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.