JK Rowling’s fundamental mistake

I had my first doubts about Lord Hall, the former director-general of the BBC, when he addressed a group of us BBC editors back in about 1999 in his role then as head of news. A pleasant, emollient man, he revealed that he was thoroughly enjoying reading the second Harry Potter book, which had recently been published. Grow up, Tony, I thought to myself. Get yourself some Dostoyevsky for Christ’s sake. Snobbish it well may be, but I can’t take seriously an adult displaying such infantile predilections (and this goes for those grown-up admirers of Philip Pullman). Harry Potter was a big sensation at the time. I remember being on the train into London from Salisbury, on the morning commute, and seeing a middle-aged man wearing shorts, eating a packet of crisps and engrossed in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. I watched him for ages, fully expecting him to tug on the sleeve of a fellow commuter and plead: ‘Can I have some more crisps please? PLEASE?’ And then start crying.

Our childhood days may have been halcyon, but they were also moronic and, more to the point, they are gone. Kidultry is just one more facet of the don’t-judge-me cretinous society we now all inhabit and which I refer to as the Disenlightenment. We need much more intellectual snobbery and also the rehabilitation of passé concepts such as embarrassment, stigma and shame. I will judge you, whether you like it or not, you stunted halfwit. Exiting the train — detraining, in the modern parlance — at Waterloo I muttered under my breath, ‘May you die in loneliness’. Later I felt bad, fearing he wasn’t an adult at all but one of those poor children afflicted with a horrible ageing disease and was actually 11. But he didn’t seem to have a ‘carer’ with him, someone like Matt Hancock to tell him to wash his hands and eat some vegetables and explain that wizards don’t really exist and that broomsticks are only good for sweeping the floor.