The second Harry Potter film, The Chamber of Secrets, is going to be “really, really, really good” according to Chris Rankin – the actor who plays Percy Weasley. The Oxford University Press will bring out Urdu translations of The Elementary Learner’s Dictionary, The Concise Oxford Dictionary, and of great English classics such as Portrait of …read more!

From the Times (UK): The phone rings. It is Denis MacShane, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Minister and not, as I had hoped, Mike McShane, the Canadian comedian. It is a good story nonetheless. On Armistice Day last year MacShane was chosen to accompany Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. “I remember she talked a lot …read more!

Even more new DVD features: * New scenes created especially for the DVD. * An interactive ”virtual tour” that lets users navigate through Hogwarts’ Great Hall, Gryffindor Common Room and other locations. * Interviews with producer David Heyman and director Chris Columbus. * A game that lets viewers learn Quidditch and catch a ”Snitch” with …read more!

Thanks to reader Amanda for this: In this month’s Issue of Realm there an entire section devoted to the locations of some of the Harry Potter scenes… Spiffing pictures, aerial views of Chepstow Castle in South Wales, The outside of the library in Oxford…. at the end if gives the addresses and phone numbers of …read more!

Just to make this perfectly clear: The item below about HP5 being published in May was an April Fool’s Joke. C’mon guys, be a little Fred and George about it, would ya? It’s far better than the false alarms we get from the real publishing people! 🙂

Harry Potter might be crowned king of the video realm this spring. Anticipation is mounting that Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, coming to VHS and DVD May 28, could become the top-selling video of all time, surpassing the 30-million-unit mark and nudging The Lion King, current record holder, from the top spot it has …read more!

A surge in applications to a Perthshire boarding school is being attributed to the success of the Harry Potter novels. College isn’t usually a popular time for pleasure reading – students’ rooms are already piled with heavy tomes on subjects like tax law or microbiology. But when the hankering for unassigned reading does come, it’s …read more!

HOT HOT HOT news! Thanks to AReaderWhoMustNotBeNamed for sending us the heads up! We received the following excerpt of an article about to be published on the London Times’ Web site: Bloomsbury Publishing is set to make a landmark announcement that the eagerly-awaited fifth installment of the blockbuster Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the …read more!

Pottermania is set to storm the Indian shores this April. J K Rowling’s bespectacled schoolboy wizard will not only entertain ”muggle” kids with his adventures in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone – scheduled for an April 12 release – but also provide them a chance to create their own brand of magic. One Voice …read more!

Bless you, Harry Potter. Thanks to Pope John Paul II, Harry will soon have a patron saint to turn to when spells threaten to go horribly wrong. The Pope is planning to name Saint Don Bosco, a 19th-century Italian priest with a passion for magic, as the patron saint of conjurers, magicians and wizards. Harry’s …read more!