J.K. Rowling

Rather like that of her central character, Harry Potter, Joanne Kathleen Rowling's life has the makings of a fairy tale. Divorced and living in a tiny Edinburgh flat with her infant daughter, Rowling wrote Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone at a table in a café during her daughter's naps - and it was Harry Potter that rescued her. Four books later, sales have set new world records, topping 100 million. 

The idea for the books came to Rowling in 1990 on a particularly long train ride from Manchester to London. Rowling admits that there is a bit of herself in the character of Hermione, and some of her inspiration came from her own childhood. She spent her early years in Winterbourne, near Bristol, where two of her friends had the surname Potter, a name she remembers liking very much. When she was nine she moved to Tutshill near Chepstow in the Forest of Dean, a town dominated by castle on a cliff, which also explains a lot. Rowling enjoyed rambling in the fields and along the river Wye and the unspoilt natural beauty of the Forest of Dean was the inspiration for the dense, dark forest at Hogwarts. Rowling also admits collecting unusual names from around Britain. For example, 'Hedwig' was a saint, 'Dumbledore' is an old English word for 'bumble bee' and 'Snape' is the name of Suffolk town.  

The film released in 2001, based on the first novel, also owes much to the British landscape. High on the beautiful North York Moors, Goathland Station was the location for Hogsmeade Station to where the Hogwarts Express carries the wizard students to school and a specially painted steam locomotive was filmed along the picturesque Newton Dale stretch of the North Yorkshire Moors Railway. The part of Hogwarts itself was played mainly by Gloucester Cathedral, a superb base for exploring Rowling’s Forest of Dean with its many walking trails. Other locations include the exquisite villages of Lacock and Castle Combe in Wiltshire, a county which can be explored along the Wiltshire Cycleway, a waymarked route through country lanes and some of England’s most attractive villages.

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