‘Harry Potter’ author JK Rowling lambasted Britain’s press Thursday for invading her children’s privacy, telling an inquiry that a journalist even slipped a letter into her daughter’s schoolbag. Rowling said another tabloid reporter contacted a headmaster over untrue claims that her daughter had upset classmates by telling them the boy wizard died in the last book in the bestselling series. “I can’t put an invisibility cloaking device over myself and my house, nor would I wish to. But it is not normal for anyone, famous or not famous, for their address to be known to millions of newspaper readers,” she said. Rowling was speaking to the judge-led inquiry into press ethics after actress Sienna Miller and former Formula One boss Max Mosley complained of abuse by Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World tabloid. The author’s voice cracked with anger and emotion as she said the letter from the journalist came in the first flush of success of her books, which have sold more than 400 million copies and spawned a lucrative film series. “I unzipped her (her daughter’s) bag in the evening and among the usual letters from school and debris that any child generates, I found an envelope addressed to me. The letter was from a journalist,” she said. “It’s very difficult to say how angry I felt that my five-year-old’s school was no longer a place of complete security from journalists.” Rowling said she felt she was “under siege” and could not leave the house after the birth of her two subsequent children.
