Harry Potter tour

I am being really lax about keeping this blog going.  So I will take more effort for a bit.

We went to the Warner Brothers studio near Watford to see the Harry Potter studio tour at the weekend.    We met up with family so there were 10 of us and we had a really good day. The tour is excellent and well worth the money.  There are the original sets for the Great Hall, the common room, bedroom, Dumbldore's office and many more.

The most impressive thing is the attention to detail, and the information about all the technical wizardry which goes into making a wizard world.  It was a great day.

I love the Harry Potter books and they are ones I will reread on a regular basis, as are the books of Terry Pratchett.  Both are fantasy worlds though they don't have much else in common except that they all tell wonderful stories.  They are complete worlds which are internally consistent, so that the characters are real and the situations in which they find themselves are real too.  It doesn't matter that there is magic, dragons etc because what happens to them is as real to them as me sitting here.  It has taken a long time for Pratchett to gain the respect he deserves and he is now recognised by the main literary fraternity as well as the SF world which has been devoted to him for decades.  The literary world hasn't given Rowling the credit she deserves for Harry Potter, and the jury is decidedly split on her new book.  I haven't read it yet, though I will at some point out of curiosity.  It will be interesting to see if she can make the transfer to a different genre.