Last week, for the seemingly annual celebration of my birth,
my oh-so-grown-up friends and I, notably all over the age of 22, went to the
most magical place you could possibly imagine:
I think it’s actually called Warner Brothers Studio Tour
London – The Making of Harry Potter, but our name was better. As we see it, we
have a better claim to be overly excited by the prospect of Harry Potter World than
the many seven year-olds that ran around us at Leavesden Studios. We grew up
with Harry! We may have been only eight when Harry first discovered he was a
wizard, but with book publishing not dove-tailing exactly with human growth the
age gap eventually evened out. We are the generation that fancied him, pined
after him and so desperately wanted to be a part of his world that our
contentment with our own has been considerably damaged since. 
However, as much as I would love to write an entire post on
the wonders of the magical world, believe me I could, I haven’t. Instead, I
thought about how incredible it is that one story has done so amazingly well
that aspects of it can be put on show, miles away from anywhere I might add,
and people will pay a considerable sum to go and see them, even purchase
replicas. We went just as crazy as the children, more so in fact. I don’t think
they squealed quite as much at Robert Pattinson’s Quidditch uniform, and I was
more than enthusiastic when allowed to push open the doors of The Great Hall
along with the other birthday people/children. You could see The Knight Bus,
Dumbledoor’s office and Buckbeak the hippogriff, to name but a tiny few. For us, it wasn’t all about
the film memorabilia, that wasn’t what was exciting, it was seeing everything
you’d imagined when reading the books brought to life and sitting right there
in front of you. I walked up Diagon Alley! I really did! And for that briefest
of moments you completely forget it’s a film set, to you it’s as real as the
gasps you made when Pettigrew got away, or the laughs you had at Lee Jordan’s
Quidditch commentary.
“Um, Evie, this is sounding an awful lot like an entire post
on the wonders of the magical world.”
Yes, it is, sorry, but I do have a point and will lead
seamlessly to my blog-post question.
What other books should have visit-able worlds?
For example, Charles Dickens
World. Though I’m not sure this would be quite so fun: mainly dark, smoggy
London streets and a feeling of damp foreboding. Unless you had people dressed
as the characters, that would add a nice, dramatic element and you could have a
Christmas Carol section where you were visited by the three ghosts…doubt it
would be as fun without the Muppets though.
But you catch my drift? It’s actually quite hard. I had
suggestions of Alice and Wonderland or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory but
that’s creating an actual place that the characters go to in the books. I mean
more of a world created out of everything you remember from the books, such as
a Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials World where you’d find your daemon, meet a dangerous but ever
so nice, giant polar bear, go for a ride in Lee Scoresby’s hot air balloon and
try not to get caught by the Magisterium.
So in true publishing condiment tradition, I now give the
floor to you. Comment away on what worlds you would like to visit, I look
forward to your imaginative suggestions.
P.S. Photos kindly taken and donated by the beautiful Subha Chelvam.
Brave new world?
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