In a quick interview, author extraordinary J K Rowling tells us about some her favourite things...
What was the last truly great book you read?
Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin. I met the author at a reception in the American embassy in London last year. I was so excited that I was bobbing up and down on the spot like a five-year-old.
What was the last book that made you cry?
The Casual Vacancy. I bawled while writing the ending, rereading it and when editing it.
What were your favourite books as a child?
The Little White Horse, by Elizabeth Goudge; Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott; Manxmouse, by Paul Gallico; everything by Noel Streatfeild; everything by E Nesbit; Black Beauty by Anna Sewell.
Did you have a favourite character or hero as a child?
Do you have a literary hero as an adult? My favourite literary heroine is Jo March. It is hard to overstate what she meant to a small, plain girl called Jo, who had a hot temper and a burning ambition to be a writer.
What books have your own children introduced you to recently? Or you to them?
My son introduced me to Cressida Cowell’s dragon books, which are so good and funny. I recently started pressing Kurt Vonnegut Jr. to my elder daughter, who is a scientist.
If you could meet any writer, dead or alive, who would it be?
Colette and Dickens. If Colette was prepared to talk freely, it would be the meeting of a lifetime because she led such an incredible life (her biography, Secrets of the Flesh, by Judith Thurman, is one of my all-time favourites). By the narrowest of margins, though, I think I’d meet Dickens.
What do you plan to read next?
There are three books that I need to read for research sitting on my desk, but for pleasure, because I love a good whodunit and she’s a master, I’m going to read The Vanishing Point by Val McDermid.
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