J.K. Rowling

I have only just found out that J.K. Rowling’s mum had MS and died after 10 years of suffering, apparently.

I am quite shocked. Am not a fan of HP but was reading a bit about her rags to riches story.

You learn something new every day!

"Inspiration and mother’s death

After working at Amnesty International in London, Rowling and her then-boyfriend decided to move to Manchester.[23] In 1990, while she was on a four-hour-delayed train trip from Manchester to London, the idea for a story of a young boy attending a school of wizardry “came fully formed” into her mind.[39] She told The Boston Globe that “I really don’t know where the idea came from. It started with Harry, then all these characters and situations came flooding into my head.”[23][39] When she had reached her Clapham Junction flat, she began to write immediately.[23][40]

In December of that year, Rowling’s mother died, after ten years suffering from multiple sclerosis.[23] Rowling commented, “I was writing Harry Potter at the moment my mother died. I had never told her about Harry Potter.”[21] Rowling said this death heavily affected her writing[21][41] and that she introduced much more detail about Harry’s loss in the first book, because she knew about how it felt.[42]"

Just to fill you in a bit more; she was Patron of the MS Society in Scotland. Reading between the lines (my interpretation) the MSS wanted the money she raised to come to London so she resigned.

She still does a lot of work and raises loads of money for MS research in Scotland.

George

George

You are reading between the wrong lines. JKs generous donation was always staying with the Edinburgh research teams.

When she resigned there were many issues with MSS Scotland which took quite some time to rectify…similar in some ways to the issues from NI a few years before.

Liz [Moderator]