01-J.K. Rowling: A Year in the Life

It's November, 2006.

J. K. Rowling is working in secret on the final chapters of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in a hotel room in Edinburgh.

Yeah, I've helpfully made the note for myself:" This will need very serious planning."

I don't know when I wrote that.

And I was quite right in that.

The Harry Potter series has taken 17 years to write.

It's an epic saga of childhood confusion, danger and adventure.

But it's more than just a children's story.

Behind the witchcraft and the wizardry lies an intensely moral fable about good and evil, love and hatred, life and death.

My name is James Runcie. I'm a writer and a filmmaker.