Category: Radio 4
Date: 08.12.2005
Printable version
In Living With Harry Potter (Saturday 10 December, 9.00am, 大象传媒 Radio 4), J K Rowling and Stephen Fry brighten up Saturday morning with a conversation about the phenomenon that is Harry Potter.
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In the course of this half-hour conversation, J K Rowling reveals her own favourite children's writer (E Nesbit) and her concerns about "sanitising" children's literature.
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She says : "I feel very strongly that there is a move to sanitise literature because we're trying to protect children not from the grizzly facts of life but from their own imaginations...
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"We need to fear and we need to confront fear in an controlled environment and that's a very important part of growing up... the child that has been protected from the Dementors in fiction, I would argue, is much more likely to fall prey to them later in life in reality."
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Stephen Fry asks about the relationship between Harry and Voldemort and J K Rowling firmly rejects the suggestion that he is Harry's father - "that's a Star Wars question" - and promises they won't turn out to be Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker.
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J K Rowling tells Stephen Fry about writing a new book whilst hearing the audio tapes of an earlier book in the series being played by her daughter and asks him about the way he reads the stories.
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Stephen tells her that before each new book he has a CD made of all the characters so that he can remind himself what each character sounds like.
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She asks how he does Hermione's voice and Stephen reveals his inspiration to be Stanley Baxter.
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He says: "I always loved the Scottish comedian Stanley Baxter and I noticed from an early age, I was about 10, that when he did a woman he would deepen his voice unlike trying to do a falsetto and actually for a lot of women that works very well."
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She talks to Stephen Fry in general terms about the new book, number seven in the canon, confirming that she does know how it will end.
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She confesses: "Occasionally I get cold shivers when someone guesses at something that's very close and then I panic and I think it's very obvious and then someone says something that's so off the wall that I think 'No, clearly it's not that obvious'.
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"For the first time I'm very aware that I'm close to finishing... the end is in sight."
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Living with Harry Potter, 大象传媒 Radio 4, Saturday 10 December 2005, 9.00am
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