Harry Potter travel guide may spell trouble
A writer sued over one JK Rowling book tries to pen another based on her hero
Stuart MacDonald writing in The Times.

An American author whose Harry Potter encyclopedia was banned after a legal battle with JK Rowling is to write a travel guide based on the boy wizard’s exploits.

Steve Vander Ark faces crossing swords with the millionaire author again by publishing a “travel memoir” detailing visits to British locations he claims inspired the Harry Potter series.

Rowling’s agents have asked to see a copy of In Search of Harry Potter before it is published next month to ensure it does not breach copyright. Last week a New York judge awarded Rowling almost £4,000 damages and banned Vander Ark’s Harry Potter Lexicon. Rowling had argued that the book was a “wholesale theft of 17 years of my hard work”.

Despite the ruling, Vander Ark, a former librarian from Michigan, said he intends to press ahead with his guide. It recounts his travels to King’s Cross station, where Potter and the other wizards board the Hogwarts Express, London’s Charing Cross Road, the site of the Leaky Cauldron pub, and Surrey, where Harry lived in the fictitious town of Little Whinging.

Read the complete piece at The Times online.