20 years later, people are still spellbound by Harry Potter

Where does the time go?

Two decades after the first Harry Potter book, the spell is unbroken, says Jonathan deBurca Butler.

Twenty years ago today a bespectacled boy wizard took his first tentative steps into the world’s cultural conscience with the publication of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Seven books later, Harry Potter had become a phenomenon. JK Rowling had lured millions of readers with her wordsmithery and bagged herself a tidy £60 million (€68m) along the way. We asked some well-known Irish Potter fans what made the series so magical for them.