The Unbearable Audacity of JK Rowling

How dare Britain's most famous, most successful, novelist forget to know her place? The shame of it, eh?

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Few things are more paradoxical than fame. It is suffocating but it is liberating. It narrows a world and it expands it too. Banalities that are now impossible, or at least harder than they used to be - popping to the shops, for instance, or knowing the price of a train ticket - are matched by an awareness that things which were once impossible - such as putting money where it may make a real difference - are now easily within the bounds of feasibility.

JK Rowling does not talk about the things she talks about despite her wealth and celebrity; she talks about them because of her riches and fame. Understand this and you may perceive an answer to the often-put question: “She doesn’t have to do any of this, so why does she?”

Rowling is a rare public author in Britain. Harry Potter conquered the …