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Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Stephen Fry unabridged audiobook available Monday 22nd August 2005

"Stephen Fry is the Potter-perfect narrator" The Times

More than 2 million people bought the sixth Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, in the first 24 hours. Now publication of the audio edition gives the whole family the chance to stop fighting over their copy of the book and listen to it all together.

There are now over 200 characters in play in the Harry Potter books and Stephen Fry has created more than 165 voices for them. Stephen says that sometimes he finds clues to the kind of voice a character should have in J.K. Rowling"s writing or in the character names: "Sometimes [there is] a turn of phrase that makes me think well that sounds like a Cockney or that's an older character or that's a younger character..." Luckily he felt that Hagrid was West Country, as J.K. Rowling says "that was the only character I felt protective about accent-wise." And otherwise, Stephen says, "the sound engineer very kindly has an indexed CD to remind me."

J.K. Rowling describes Stephen's reading as "though someone you know well is reading to you and that person happens to be talented at voices but [doesn't] form a big barrier between the listener and the story." Stephen says about reading the Harry Potter books "It's the perfect thing to read. If I was told I was going to have to do a series of big novels I might have thought at first maybe Trollope or the complete Jane Austen but I don't think I would have got a tenth as much pleasure."

"The twists and turns of Rowling's sixth Potter epic are as sensational as in any of the previous adventures." The Sun

"Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is taut, witty, effortlessly engaging, and very, very nasty. How we yearn for more." Peter Lambert, Times Literary Supplement

"Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has all the characteristics we have come to expect: a gripping story with its clues trailed through the text, chills, spills and some excellent, new comic characters." Julian Fellowes, Sunday Telegraph

"This is the book in which everything in the series starts to come to fruition ... This ingenious setting up is intriguing for aficionados, who have been hungry to discover that happens next" Nicolette Jones, Sunday Times

FACTS AND FIGURES:
In 21 hours you could:
• Drive from Lands End to Edinburgh Castle and back again
• Fly from London to Perth, Australia
• Run the men's 100 metres world record 7700 times
• Play 14 football matches
• Listen to Queen"s "It's a kind of magic" 290 times

Listening time: 20 hours 35 minutes
CDs (17 disks) £65
Tapes (14 cassettes) £55

BIOGRAPHIES
J.K. (Joanne Katherine) Rowling has written fiction since she was a child, and always wanted to be an author. Her parents loved reading, and their house in Chepstow was full of books. The idea for Harry Potter occurred to J.K.Rowling on the train from Manchester to London, where she says Harry Potter "just strolled into my head fully formed", and by the time she had arrived at King"s Cross, many of the characters had taken shape.

Stephen Fry joined the Footlights at Cambridge University where he met and performed with Emma Thompson and Hugh Laurie, appeared in many plays and also began to write. He has acted for theatre, film and TV since then, as well as being a successful author himself. Stephen has read all the Harry Potter books and his performance of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone won a 1999 Talkie Award. He has won Gold Spoken Word Awards for his readings of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in 2001 and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in 2004.

(official Press Release)

More information:
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince UK Audio Book

Published August 20, 2005

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