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He duly returned to direct Chamber Of Secrets. But the studio, Warner Brothers, loved what Columbus had done with Home Alone and Mrs Doubtfire, and quite right too. There had been talk before him of Steven Spielberg doing it, and Rowling herself reportedly wanted Terry Gilliam. I defer to Joe in all Muggle matters, and he puts it simply: ‘I don’t know anyone who loved the books, who doesn’t love the films.’ So Sorting Hats off to Chris Columbus, who directed Philosopher’s Stone. Needless to add, the filmmakers carried a hefty burden of responsibility – to make the Potter stories as magical to watch as they had been to read. It will never mean as much to my generation as it does to the next one down, but like many a parent whose children were born after about 1990, I have warm memories of taking them to the cinema to see it and the subsequent films in the series, at least until they reached that age when being spotted at a Harry Potter picture with your mum or dad – or worse still, both – was like the Serpent of Slytherin taking a poisonous bite out of your reputation. This week, Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone, the movie, itself turns 20 years old. It wasn’t just that they all adored the books, it was also that they followed the exact trajectory as those Hogwarts pupils, from rosy-cheeked children to hairy teens, at pretty much the same time. Joe recently spent a few days in Cornwall with three old school friends, and tells me that one evening they all sat down and watched the film of Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone with just as much relish as they had, again and again, when they were kids. As it happens, he’s become a successful writer himself, for a US-produced podcast called History Daily, if you’ll forgive a proud father’s plug.īut Harry, Ron, Hermione, Hagrid and co are still close to his heart, as they are to those of millions of so-called millennials, the world over. It makes me so sad.’ Joe is 26 now and has got over the disappointment.

I thought she would be charmed and amused, but instead she winced, and said, ‘Oh, I hate hearing that. As she cheerfully signed them, I told her how desperately crestfallen Joe had been on the day he realised he would never be a wizard. When we finished filming I handed her a couple of Potter books, which had been voraciously read and re-read by my middle son, Joe, who was 11 at the time. I have to say that Jo Rowling wore her success lightly and graciously that day in her Edinburgh office. Amazingly, it was less than ten years since Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone had landed in bookshops, whisking her off on what became one of the craziest journeys any author has ever made, from impecunious obscurity to global fame and unimaginable fortune.