Rowling's £1m helps party as her friend Sarah Brown takes stage
Gaby Hinsliff, political editor writing in The Observer,
Sunday September 21 2008

JK Rowling, left, with Sarah Brown, backs the PM's child poverty fight. Photograph: Martin Argles

They are probably the two most important women in Gordon Brown's world just now. Yesterday JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter novels and a close friend of the Prime Minister's wife, bailed out his cash-strapped party - and his credibility - with a million-pound cheque.

Today Sarah Brown will do her own bit to boost her husband's image by making a speech on the Labour party conference fringe, calling for intervention to prevent deaths in childbirth in developing countries.
Rowling, a once impoverished single mother who made her multi-million pound fortune chronicling the adventures of a boy wizard, said yesterday that her gift was motivated by Brown's record in prioritising child poverty, compared with David Cameron's offer of tax breaks to married couples which she found 'reminiscent of the Conservative government I experienced as a lone parent'.

Rowling, who has since remarried, added: 'It sends the message that the Conservatives still believe a childless, dual-income but married couple is more deserving of a financial pat on the head than those struggling, as I once was, to keep their families afloat.'

Read the full story here.