Tim Cornwell: Who will follow in Harry's footsteps?

Published on Friday 8 July 2011 00:19

THERE'S a generation of parents that has grown up with Harry Potter along with their children.

Before my daughters moved to Edinburgh with us a decade ago, they'd already become members of the privileged Rowling generation. Our eldest as a small child became fearful of snakes slithering through walls after the second book – and wondering if like Harry, she'd be able to understand the language of serpents, Parseltongue. We did the books, the CDs, the midnight launches and the films.

There's been a loss of innocence along the way, and it wasn't Harry's first kiss. The books grew darker and more doom-laden. The first, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, was a joyous romp in that first trip to Hogwarts. Then came the increasingly savage shadow of Voldemort and the Death Eaters, the murders of Harry's closest and cosiest allies, amid the ugly, Nazi-like attacks on "mud-blood" Wizards.

The Rowling story has also changed. A few years ago, it was that Harry Potter had taught boys to read again (though one of her brilliant turns was to create in Hermione a girl with as much guts and more wit than Harry himself). As the eighth and last Harry Potter film premieres this week, it's about the future of Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson, a 4 billion film franchise, and global sales of 400 million books that have made their author fabulously rich.

I'm looking forward to Harry Potter and the Ghostly Hallows Part 2 – as the actors who played him and his chums wonder what to do with the next 50 years of their careers. A few of the films have passed me by, but I saw part one after rave reviews from my nearest and dearest. It has deserved to be the most successful film franchise in history, and Rowling's done a great job in mixing directors, and maintaining quality, with perfect character outings from the likes of Maggie Smith or Robbie Coltrane.

As Harry heads into the sunset, will we see his like again? We've hardly seen his like before. Rowling created a publishing phenomenon with readers as desperate to gobble up her books as they were for Charles Dickens' instalments – ironically, just as the printed book went into a technological slump. There's very little clue as to where she'll go next. Will she really be able to shed him, or equal him? How's about the further adventures of Hermione?

People will clearly be reading Rowling for a century from now. I'm not sure they'll value her work for its poetry, but for the astonishing power of her imagination, from those "howler" letters that literally scream off the page – we all know how that feels – to the Whomping Willow, or just the array of delicious names.

Children will revere and return to it in the way an earlier generation did with CS Lewis (reported sales: about 100 million) or in my case Ursula Le Guin. My personal addiction was Le Guin's The Wizard of Earthsea, the first of a trilogy, where she told the story of a young goatherd who went – surprise, surprise – to a boarding school for wizards to learn their craft, though utterly different from Hogwarts.

The biggest Rowling watershed this month may not be the new film. It could be her break with Christopher Little, the agent who saw her first book, and the subsequent six, through to publication. There may be a few publishers knocking on his door for his story now, though he surely won't need the money.

One issue with the break, apparently, is the forthcoming Pottermore website. On it JK Rowling will be selling digital audio and e-books and sharing "additional information I've been hoarding for years" about Harry Potter. Lets hope she never goes near the Silmarillion route of JRR Tolkein. His turgid turn into the mythology of Middle Earth, framing the story behind the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit – published only after his death – was a famous flop described by one reviewer as "an empty and pompous bore".

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle gave us the dashing Brigadier Gerard and the leering pirate Sharkey, but tried and failed to kill off Sherlock Holmes. Rowling had Harry's adventures mapped out years ahead, we're told; who knows what other characters she's waiting to unfold?