J K Rowling says Harry Potter book was at risk during first marriage in podcast The Witch Trials of JK Rowling

How can we ever know what could have been or should have been? For the author J K Rowling, she has acknowledged on a new podcast that Harry Potter may not have survived if she had not left an abusive relationship.

Rowling has spoken before about her first marriage to Portuguese television journalist Jorge Arantes on previous occasions. Rowling experienced domestic abuse during her marriage.Arantes said in June 2020 that he had slapped her and did not regret it.Rowling described the marriage as "short and catastrophic".

The first two episodes of JK Rowling’s new podcast titled The Witch Trials of JK Rowling aired on Tuesday (21 February) and she made a comment that when she was trying to leave her abusive first marriage she was worried the manuscript may not survive.

Rowling said that she “left [Arantes] twice before I left for good”, and was planning to leave him for the last time while pregnant with her daughter.

"He’s not a stupid person," she said. "I think he knew, or suspected, that I was going to bolt again. It was a horrible state of tension to live in."

Rowling said that throughout this period, she kept writing and "the [Harry Potter] manuscript kept growing".

"He knew what that manuscript meant to me, because at a point, he took the manuscript and hid it, and that was his hostage," she said. “When I realised that I was going to go - this was it, I was definitely going - I would take a few pages of the manuscript into work every day.

"Just a few pages, so he wouldn’t realise anything was missing, and I would photocopy it. And gradually, in a cupboard in the staff room, bit by bit, a photocopied manuscript grew and grew and grew."

Rowling has a much happier home life these days after marrying her second husband, Neil Murray, in 2001. Neil is a doctor and the couple have a son and a daughter together, as well as Rowling's child, Jessica, from her first marriage.

The huge success of Harry Potter allowed Rowling to donate to charitable causes, which she has done so extensively - including issues affecting women and children. Rowling established the Volant Charitable Trust in 2000, named after her motherto address social deprivation in at-risk women, children and youth.

Rowling's charitable donations before 2012 were estimated by Forbes at $160 million. She was the second most generous UK donor in 2015 (following the singer Elton John), giving about $14 million.

She has, of course, not been without controversy. She addressed the transgender rights controversy which has followed her since she started to speak out on the issue in 2019.

Asked by Phelps-Roper if she thought about her legacy and how things she said impacted how she’d be viewed in years to come, the author said: "Whatever. I’ll be dead."

She added: "I think you could not have misunderstood me more profoundly. I do not walk around my house thinking about my legacy, what a pompous way to live your life thinking about what my legacy will be. Whatever! I’ll be dead, I care about now, the living."

If you have been affected by issues raised in this article then you can contact Refuge on the freephone, 24-hour National Domestic Abuse Helpline 0808 2000 247.