Rowling Studies The Hogwarts Professor Podcast

(Credit: Telegraph article, June 2017, J.K. Rowling at the Raisa Gorbachev Foundation party in 2007, wearing a floral diamond necklace and matching earrings, cf., Christmas Pig)
Solomon Schmidt, author of A Pen to Change the World: The Life of J. K. Rowling (Skyhorse, June 2026), sat down with us again to discuss what challenges he faced in collating and synthesizing almost thirty years of interviews for his biography. He also shares the three questions he’d ask The Presence if she’d consent to an interview, questions that he thinks she might answer; Solomon turned the tables on his interviewers who had to improv questions they’d ask without being told their interview with Rowling was over.
The necessary links to the book’s Amazon page and to the two Hogwarts Professor reviews are here:
* A Pen to Change the World: The Life of J.K. Rowling (Amazon.com)
* A Pen to Change the World: The Life of J.K. Rowling (Amazon.co.uk) Uk Edition
* A Pen to Change the World – the Biography of J. K. Rowling by Solomon Schmidt (Nick Jeffery)
* Book Review: A Pen to Change the World - The Life of J. K. Rowling (John Granger)
Five Questions for Solomon Schmidt, Author of A Pen to Change the World:
5. I said you didn’t get to interview Rowling, which is true, but you did have access to all her interviews that she has done 1997 to the present as well as the interviews and articles with her family, friends, fans, and business associates. How did you find, assemble, and sift through those interviews?6. If you had been allowed inside the gates of Fortress Rowling and you were only allowed three questions, what would you ask her? (This is a game John and I regularly play, and usually John’s questions would get him thrown out of an interview!)7. What discoveries that you made in your research were the most exciting to you?8. Rowling has said repeatedly through the years that the critical negative events of her life that reshaped her thinking and her work were the death of her mother and the abusive relationship she had with her first husband. Agree or disagree? What do you think were the most important positive turns in her life?9. Very few people I meet don’t have a fixed opinion about Rowling; the world seems to love and hate her in equal measure with little grey area between the two: adoring fans and political allies on the one hand and those that despise her work, her political efforts, or both. Where do you fall in that divide and how hard was it to represent the other point of view in your biography?10. I assume you’ve started researching your next biography though you’ll be neck deep in this book’s launch for a few months. What will you be working on next?


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hogwartsprofessor.substack.com/subscribe

(Credit: Neil Wilder, Edinburgh 1999, now in National Portrait Galley)
Solomon Schmidt, author of A Pen to Change the World: The Life of J. K. Rowling (Skyhorse, June 2026), sat down with us this week to discuss what moved him to write a Rowling biography at the height of her radioactivity as a supposed “transphobe” and the obstacles that Rowling, Inc., puts in the way of unauthorized biographers. He also shares the kindness and circumspection of the people who did agree to speak with him, to include Neil Blair and Jorge Arantes.
The necessary links to the book’s Amazon page and to the two Hogwarts Professor reviews are here:
* A Pen to Change the World: The Life of J.K. Rowling (Amazon.com)
* A Pen to Change the World: The Life of J.K. Rowling (Amazon.co.uk) Uk Edition
* A Pen to Change the World – the Biography of J. K. Rowling by Solomon Schmidt (Nick Jeffery)
* Book Review: A Pen to Change the World - The Life of J. K. Rowling (John Granger)
The second part of our conversation with Mr Schmidt will be posted next week. The first five questions he answered were:
1. What moved you to start this project? You've already written a biography of Alan Dershowitz and many more in the History Bites series; what made J. K. Rowling an inviting subject to you? What made it different from the other biographies you've written?2. You wrote in the acknowledgements at book's end that you didn't write the biography as a work of "literary criticism," but you do discuss everything she has written or collaborated on, Philosopher's Stone to Ink Black Heart. What would you have included in those discussions if you had been writing "literary criticism"?3. This is an "Unauthorized" biography which means you were researching and writing outside the gates of Team Rowling, simultaneously shut off from Rowling and her circle of friends and, one would hope, outside her ability to shape the narrative you put together of her life. You did, though, get some push-back from Rowling, Inc.'s legal arm at one point; what was that about?4. You weren't able to interview Rowling, her sister, her husband, her father, her daughter Jessica, Sean Harris, the Sisters of Swing, Michael the boyfriend, Lucy Shepherd, Pearl Biddle, or 'Starsky and Cox.' You did find and scored interviews with Jorge Arantes, Barry Cunningham (the publisher who signed J. K. Rowling to Bloomsbury), Steve Eddy (one of Rowling’s English teachers), Neil Blair (sort of!), and her American cousins, Ben and Bryony Rowling. How did you find these sources and what was it like sitting down to speak with them?5. I said you didn't get to interview Rowling, which is true, but you did have access to all her interviews that she has done 1997 to the present as well as the interviews and articles with her family, friends, fans, and business associates. How did you find, assemble, and sift through those interviews?
Please share your thoughts below as well as follow-up questions you wish we had asked! Part Two will be up in a week…


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hogwartsprofessor.substack.com/subscribe

‘Fiona F’ is a Hogwarts Professor subscriber in Adelaide, Australia, the truly down under capitol of the South Pacific island-continent. She works as an environmental scientist on the days she isn’t combing through the Cormoran Strike novels of Rowling-Galbraith in search of answers to the over-arching mysteries of that series.
The Hogwarts Professor Talking Heads duo invited her to a discussion of her potential solutions to two of the unresolved questions that have to be answered before the epilogue of Strike 10, namely, ‘What really happened in the ruled-a-suicide deaths of Leda Strike and Charlotte Campbell?’ Fiona seems to have broken both cases using information dropped as asides in Hallmarked Man.
The Ten Questions that guided their conversation are below with the promised links and Fiona’s time-lines and comments on the Moderator Backchannel they discuss.
In brief, about Leda’s death Fiona notes that we learn in Strike 8 that Shanker is familiar with ‘Barnaby’s, the preferred body-disposal business used by the London under-world, to include the Ricci Crime Syndicate. She connects that dot with (1) Strike’s memory of making a drug delivery for Shanker to the Ricci Godfather way back in the day when the two shared a flat and (2) Shanker’s near panicked warnings to Strike not to investigate the Riccis in Troubled Blood. Fiona’s theory? Means, motive, and opportunity point to the possibility that Leda’s heroin overdose was a Ricci ‘message’ to Shanker that he had better not cross them in a drug deal. Readers have missed this possibility because Shanker loved Leda like a mother, which love unfortunately made her a perfect target for the gangsters to ‘get at’ Strike’s adopted brother.
And Charlotte’s death? Fiona, unlike much of Strike fandom, accepts the Jeffery hypothesis (see here, here, and here) that Ms Campbell-Ross did not kill herself but was murdered in a staged-suicide (a la Leda Strike, Lula Landry, Jasper Chiswell, and Kevin Pirbright). After a close reading of Hallmarked Man, Fiona realized that Dino Longcaster, whom Tara Campbell married after she had divorced Charlotte’s supposed biological father, may have been, based on his fathering Rupert Fleetwood in an adulterous relationship, Milady Bezerko’s real sperm-donor daddy (and at home molester).
Which possible parentage would have made Charlotte and Valentine Longcaster half-siblings. Fiona theorizes from there that the baby Charlotte says was Strike’s was Valentine’s (a la Rupert and Decima’s Lion), that Jago Ross’ children might have been Valentine’s, or both. Valentine, Jago, and Tara shoot to the top of the ‘Charlotte Murder’ suspect list, with Sasha, Rupert, and Amelia as Tara’s agents all possibilities.
Fiona, Nick, and John discuss the various Rowling Golden Threads in play with each of these theories — incest, pregnancy traps, staged suicides — and how both Fiona’s Ricci-Shanker and Secret Charlotte theories are textbook illustrations of Rowling misdirection while planting clues in plain sight.
John and Nick are grateful to Fiona for getting up as early as she did to chat with them and for sharing her theories here with the Serious Strikers at Hogwarts Professor. Hats doffed with a bow from the waist in admiration and gratitude!
The Ten Questions With Links and Notes
1. Fiona, you, Nick, and I have been chatting on the moderator back channels since May and we’ve shared your Daddy Dino theory in which Charlotte was another Longcaster child conceived in adultery and Valentine was her incestuous lover and abuser. Nick and I discussed that idea on our ‘Incest Golden Thread’ program. But none of us know who you are really and I just learned you’re living in Central Australia. Tell us about Fiona, a Welsh name?, and what brought you to Serious Striker land?
12 April Fiona Comments on Moderator Backchannel:
In response to a post by Cheryl Rose Orrocks on 17 Feb 2026, my current theory is that Dino Longcaster is Charlotte’s father and that his son, Valentine Longcaster, will be revealed as her abuser and the possible biological father of Charlotte’s children. Hence the 2nd incest storyline will also involve the Langcaster family. This could be why Charlotte’s mother, Tara, despised Charlotte so much.
If Jago Ross is somehow linked to the matter of the DNA test involving Bijou and Strike, it may be because he had Charlotte’s birth children DNA tested to confirm parentage. Maybe Jago discovers he is not the biological father and assumes Strike is, hence the reason he wants to obtain Strike’s DNA results.
2. Nick was telling me the other day that he has been re-reading the series and it’s changed his thinking about how he would rank the books, especially in light of Hallmarked Man. I hope he’ll clarify what he means by that – and that you’ll share, Fiona, where Strike 8 is on your list of best to worst Strike novels and if or how it changed your thoughts about the first seven.
3. By the time this conversation is posted, I hope to have put up a short summary of your Birthday Party Theory, Fiona, or else it will be the text beneath this conversation. In brief, you lay out the calendar dates after Sacha Legard’s birthday party with respect to Charlotte’s death. Can you tell us why you thought that party had something to do with her death and how you went about setting up the time-line?
May 6 Fiona note on Moderator Backchannels:
In this video, your comments regarding Rupert Fleetwood and Charlotte’s murder (1:00:17) got me thinking. If Charlotte was murdered, her murderer was likely present at Sacha Legard’s birthday party.
After checking out several sources (books (physical copies) 7 TRG and 8 THM, Strike Fans, the Farting Faculty Lounge and Hogwarts Professor) I put together a rough timeline to assemble my thoughts.
* Saturday 21 May 2016: Sacha Legard’s birthday. Valentine and Cosima Longcaster are at the party. Rupert Fleetwood gatecrashes and he and Valentine have some kind of confrontation (refer THM Chapter. 36, pages 291 and 292). I presume Charlotte and Amelia would have been at the party as they are Sacha’s half siblings, however I have no evidence to support this.
* Friday, 27 May 2016: Strike listens to Charlotte’s voicemail messages. (TRG, Chapter 55, pages 421 and 423).
* Tuesday, 14 June 2016: Charlotte is arrested for assault on Landon Dormer (TRG, Chapter 59).
* Thursday, 23 June 2016: Strike deletes three voicemails from Charlotte before heading up to his attic flat (Chapter 61). Charlotte Campbell dies (commits suicide?).
* Friday, 23 December 2016: When Strike goes to the National Theatre to interview Sacha Legard (THM, Chapter 36, pg. 289). Sacha says he ‘was shooting a film in Mexico (Conquest?) when all this business with him [Rupert] and Dessie happened.’
I’m unsure when Sacha was in Mexico (before and/or after his birthday party on 21 May 2016). If he was filming in Mexico after his birthday then he may not have been in London when Charlotte died. If filming in Mexico finished before his birthday, he would have to be on the short-list of murder suspects.
As Charlotte loved tension, conflict, and rows, she may have overheard the confrontation between Rupert and Valentine. Presuming the confrontation was about DNA testing and Dino Longcaster being Rupert’s biological father, maybe the DNA results also contained information about other unknown (and related) people with a similar DNA profile to Rupert and the Longcaster’s (Dino, Valentine, Decima and Cosima) and Rupert threatened Valentine with this information. Valentine is scared of his father, Dino, and wouldn’t want the DNA paternity information to reach Dino.
If Valentine Longcaster (as possible Charlotte abuser), finds out he is the biological father of Charlotte’s children and realises that Charlotte has found this out, that could be a strong motive for murder, particularly as he was appalled by the incest between Decima and Rupert.
It will be interesting to see if Rupert makes an appearance in Book 9.
* See Louise Freeman Davis’ Strike and Ellacott Timelines at The Farting Sofa Faculty Lounge.
4. Your conclusion is a mind-blower as I’ve written in my notes you to invite you to wake up early down under to talk about it. To skip to the Big Reveal, you think, if Charlotte was at the birthday party or learned from Cosima or Valentine about the Dino-Decima-Rupert genetic conjunction, that Valentine Longcaster has to jump to the top of the Campbell-Ross ‘assisted suicide’ list. How so?
5. This is fascinating theorizing, Fiona, and it highlights what Nick has said that the complexity and crowdedness of Hallmarked is a marker of Rowling crafting a “target rich” environment for Books 9 and 10 possibilities. You wrote on 4 June that what if, instead of being molested at home by Trevik, her supposed biological father, she had been abused by a schoolteacher. Why did you think that was possible and how would it color your thinking about her life and death?
4 June Fiona Comment
Have you considered the possibility that Leda Strike (Peggy Nancarrow) was molested by a school teacher, rather than a victim of incest. Both scenarios are obviously awful. I have been pondering this because Leda/Peggy packed up and moved so often and Cormoran and Lucy never stayed in the same school for very long.
6. On 10 June you sent your magnum opus, the Leda Strike life timeline and a ‘Means Before Motive’ examination of her death. Again, why bother and how did you track down the dates?
7. What did the data reveal about Leda that you hadn’t seen before?
10 June Fiona Timeline for Leda Strike
I have been systematically going back through the Strike books using the JKR finder in an attempt to work out who killed Leda Strike.
I am relying on Rowling playing fair and that the answer to the question of Leda’s death and the evidence to support this has already been given to us in the books.
My attempt at Leda’s timeline and my murder theory are attached. There are gaps in Leda’s timeline and changing dates in the books. I mostly focused on Leda’s childhood, then the last few years of her life in London. I’d be interested in your thoughts.
Constructing Leda’s timeline was also about reaching a conclusion on whether Cormoran Strike was the product of incest. At this stage, I don’t think he was. The timeline doesn’t support the incest theory and I suspect Leda was away from St Mawes from when she married at 18 and left Strike Snr two weeks later until she returned to give birth to Cormoran at Truro hospital at age 20. Too many parties and gigs to go to!
I’d be interested in your thoughts.
Leda Strike Timeline
Peggy (Leda) born in 1954.
Ted and Peggy (Leda) mother died when Ted 16 and Peggy (Leda) 2.
Peggy (Leda) forcible separation from Ted at the age of two.
Peggy (Leda) lived with her paternal grandmother. Ted stayed with their father, Trevik.
Ted leaves home for National Service (age 18?)
Ted returns from National Service after Trevik dies. (age 25?) Married Joan. Peggy (Leda) (age 11?)
Peggy (Leda), at age 18, escapes her paternal grandmother, and runs away with a youth who’d come to Truro with the fair. Changed her name to Leda. Ted (32 years old).
Leda married youth from the fair when she was 18 years old. She had run out on her husband after only two weeks and that her sole motivation in marrying Strike Snr. (who, according to Aunt Joan, had arrived in St. Mawes with the fair) had been a new dress, and a change of name.
“Leda had never stayed still long enough to present a stable target. Often her children remained in a school for mere weeks before a new enthusiasm seized her, and off they went, to a new city, a new squat, crashing on her friends’ floors or, occasionally, renting. The only people who knew what was going on, and who might have contacted social services, were Ted and Joan.”
1990? Leda brought Shanker (age 16), who had been stabbed, home to their squat.
1991 Leda Strike met Jeff Whittaker.
1992 Nick Herbert and Strike had a joint eighteenth birthday party at the Bell pub in Whitechapel.
1992 Leda had fallen pregnant in Strike’s eighteenth year, while he was applying for university.
Leda married Jeff Whittaker in 1992.
Switch born in December 1992.
Leda died in 1994, (age 40?), when Lucy (age 19?) and Strike (age 20?)
8. Okay, now that we have Leda’s life in a mental picture, walk us through your Means Before Motive breakdown of the most likely suspects.
Fiona’s Theory about Leda’s death: Means before motive
* Means: Three Suspects
1. Member(s) of Ricci family or Ricci gang member.
2. Jeff Whittaker.
3. Shanker.
All had access to drugs.
* Motive
1. Unpaid drug debt (Whittaker) and Ricci’s killed Leda as a warning, or
2. Rival gang to Shanker’s cousin’s takes revenge (knowing Shanker is close to Leda) and kill Leda as a warning, or
3. Drug induced murder by Whittaker.
Shanker’s knowledge of organised crime in London is peerless. He knows what happened, blames Whittaker, but has never said anything to Strike. (Refer Troubled Blood, chapter 27, where Strike recalls helping Shanker make a ‘delivery’ in ‘92 or ’93 and Shanker’s reaction to Strike’s recall of that).
Maybe Leda was suffocated while she slept (similar to Margot Bamborough’s death), then injected with heroin by her killer.
* Opportunity
· Jeff Whittaker (lived at squat; a drug user).
· Shanker (frequently visited the squat; was close to Leda).
· Member(s) of Ricci family or Ricci gang member (local drug dealers) making a delivery.
9. So Shanker is both a suspect and a person of knowledge; he either did it or knew who did it? How important is Strike’s memory of the Ricci drug deal delivery for Shanker in all this?
10. The beauty of this theory is that it’s been so well set up; who has Shanker who revered Leda on their suspect list when she revered her so – and yet it was just that relationship that would have made her so vulnerable to targeting by the Riccis if Shanker stiffed them… Hence his warning Strike off the Riccis with such care in Troubled Blood and obscuring how he knows about Barnaby is Hallmarked?
John Notes 10 June
I’m intrigued by the Ricci-Shanker connection. Shanker knows about Barnaby’s and that Knowles was dispatched there; Strike sees Marco Ricci later in the story making a delivery to Barnaby’s. If I’m following your notes, Shanker’s panic about Strike investigating the Riccis in Troubled Blood isn’t out of concern for his adopted brother but from the fear that Cormoran will learn of his relationship with the family -- and, as you speculate, that Leda was killed by them as a message to young Shanker not to cross them. Shanker testified against Whittaker to scapegoat him and perhaps because he knew the Riccis would kill him if he told the truth.
* Great plot twist and one that explains the whole Knowles plot line in Hallmarked Man and the police interest in Strike’s source of information; Shanker is being presented as a dangerous criminal to readers who are blind (as are Strike and Robin) to the possibility that he was the natural suspect in Leda’s death because of his proximity to nihilist forces. The delivery Strike made for Shanker to Ricci and Shanker’s response to Strike’s memory is a critical catch in all this; well spotted!
I don’t think your timeline precludes either Ted being Strike’s father or Trevik molesting Leda as a young woman -- or another possibility. Her birth years and years after Ted’s suggests that Trevik was not her father, that her mother’s death wasn’t natural, and that Ted may have been Leda’s father via an incestuous relationship with his mum, both victims of Trevik’s abuse. Leda’s adoption by her grandmother after her mother died may have been to protect her from Trevik or her simply being cast out by him. Incest is a live issue, I think, in the Cornwall household.



This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hogwartsprofessor.substack.com/subscribe

Last week Ed Shardlow posted his thoughts about The Hallmarked Man being written in playful but meaningful parallel with Rowling’s “political fairy tale,” ‘The Hallmarked Man Meets The Ickabog.’ Nick Jeffery and John Granger called him up both to congratulate him on Arsenal winning the Premier League Cup — Go, Gunners! — and to learn as much as they could about the parallels he noted. After acknowledging the correspondences with Casual Vacancy, the trio explored Ed’s argument about the Ickabog echoing just beneath the surface of Hallmarked Man, straight up and in inversion.
The Ten Questions, Links, and Helpful Notes
1. Nick, can you provide some context for this conversation? How did we get to the point that we expected Hallmarked Man to echo in characters, plot points, and themes either Casual Vacancy or The Ickabog? No one thought that was in the cards when Rowling-Galbraith and her publishers locked down the series at ten books.
* ‘Parallels Series Idea’ Pillar Post
* Evan Willis’ Tetractys Theory: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
2. Open subject for the triumvirate to discuss here: there are a bunch of Casual Vacancy parallels in Strike 8 that have to be acknowledged. Name your favorites; I’ll start this ball Rowling…
* Ironbridge and Pagford seemed to be sister cities
* each book ‘begins’ with the sudden and tragic death of a man who haunts the rest of the novel, Barry Obama Fairbrother and Tyler Powell
* The peanut allergy that Tyler and Andrew Price have; and
* The incest secret in the Longcaster and Wall families
3. Having noted those, Ed, why are you so sure that it’s The Ickabog which is the parallel text with Hallmarked Man? Is the quantity of the parallels you and others have found, their quality, or the overarching feel of the works?
* Ed’s Post: ‘The Hallmarked Man Meets The Ickabog’
4. I was surprised by your sheep parallel. I know my Ickabog memories are not fresh, but were there a lot of lambs and ewes in Strike 8?
* Ed’s Post: ‘The Hallmarked Man Meets The Ickabog’
5. And the fish?
* Ed’s Post: ‘The Hallmarked Man Meets The Ickabog’
6. Is there something akin to the Freemasonry of Hallmarked Man in The Ickabog?
* Inversion of ‘Political Fairy Tale’ with modern touches and gritty detective novel and Medieval coloration via Freemasonry symbolism and ritual
7. Sandy Hope, our partner in the Group Adventure of charting Hallmarked Man, had a bunch of parallels that she shared in the comment thread to your post:
* One of my favorite parallels you mention is the Old Forge and the Ickabog’s cave, in which both Robin and the Ickabog tell tragic stories of birth. The Old Forge also reminds me of the transformation of the dungeon once Mrs. Beamish gets a stove installed and starts baking and feeding the prisoners. Mr. Dovetail’s broken mind is restored by Mrs. Beamish helping him remember better times, and Robin’s own brokenness is soothed by Strike’s transformation from a self-serving, manipulative jerk to a selfless, compassionate listener and genuine friend. In both stories the fire is warm and purifying. Comment Url
* One of my favorite parallels was “sticking to the game plan,” the ill-fated idea shared by Strike via Uncle Ted and also Lord Spittleworth. RFM reminds me of Ma Grunter, trying to appear sober when they’re actually drinking on the sly. Dangerous Dick de Lion is not unlike King Fred the Fearless, who both have to learn about being contrite. Robin’s bracelet is rather like Daisy’s bandalore: both gifts are initially a hit but end up secretly hidden or stolen. Comment Url
8. My favorite parallels were between the incest and ectopic pregnancy in Hallmarked Man and the Ickabog’s manner of conceiving children and birthing them. Did you laugh out loud when you figured that out? I did when I read your post -- but it bears some explaining --
* Ed’s Post: ‘The Hallmarked Man Meets The Ickabog’
9. Let’s go around the table again and talk about the connection between the two books we haven’t talked about yet --
* Avenging Ghost of Beamish and Powell
* Eslanda/Jolanda
* Sandy Hope’s Footprint Clue
* Image of St George
* The monster’s cave, the Old Forge on Sark, and an ectopic pregnancy
* Woman talking monster into returning to human society
* Ed’s brilliant parallel Character list
10. You discuss in your post that you went through two stages before arriving at your conviction that The Ickabog was the model: first the overarching story and then on re-reading The Ickabog for specific detailed parallels. Do you think we should do a re-read of Casual Vacancy -- Nick is always ready for a trip to Pagford -- to see if there aren’t specifics there, too?


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hogwartsprofessor.substack.com/subscribe

In yesterday’s Hallmarked Man Notes: The Christmas Charm Bracelet Decoded, Tod Jameson and the Ectopic Pregnancy, and Venetian Blinds, Ed Shardlow explained three sub-texts within Strike 8 that, though invisible on first and second reading, pop up during structural analysis and in light of other Rowling-Galbraith notes.
* The Christmas gift charm bracelet that Strike gives to Robin, for example, appears to be a ring and a key to Hallmarked Man, a meaning that occurred to Ed in light of Rowling’s own bracelet gift to fandom last year as a key to Sleep Tight, Evangeline;
* John Granger’s posts about Strike 8’s cryptonyms similarly encouraged Ed to think about the meaning of ‘Todd Jameson’ and how the “egg-shaped” man had several names and seemed to be stuck on the Tube; and
* Ed’s efforts to finish his charting of each Part of Hallmarked Man brought up the theme of Robin’s blindness and mental struggles in Part Three’s chapter correspondences.
In conversation with Nick and John explore these ideas as well as the potential importance of A. H. Murdoch, a historical figure that Rowling-Galbraith invented whole-cloth, the meaning of his name (‘Alexander Hughson’), and the passages from his book, Secrets of the Craft, which of course are also Rowling-written.
Below are relevant links to the subjects the trio discuss and copies of the ten questions John and Nick asked Ed. Enjoy!
Links to Conversation Subjects
* Hallmarked Man Notes: The Christmas Charm Bracelet Decoded, Tod Jameson and the Ectopic Pregnancy, and Venetian Blinds
Charm Bracelets
* The Christmas Charm Bracelet of Strike 9 Clues (Part One)
* The Christmas Charm Bracelet of Strike 9 Clues (Part Two)
* 'Sleep Tight, Evangeline,' Miniature Psalters, and the Head of Persephone: A Conversation with Dimitra Fimi
Cryptonyms of Hallmarked Man
* The Allegorical Cryptonyms of The Hallmarked Man, Part One
* What do Tyler Powell, Rupert Fleetwood, Jolanda Lindvall, and Lady Jensen Have in Common?
* The Allegorical Cryptonyms of The Hallmarked Man, Part Two
* Wet Squibs, Islamic Cub Names, the Seven Strike Series Structure Theories, and How a Human Being Reads a Story
* The Lost Child Golden Thread in the Work of J. K. Rowling (Kanreki)
* The Pre Natal Infanticide Theory Explaining the Lost Child Golden Thread (Kanreki)
Rowling as Sacred Artist: A Perennialist Reading
* Ray Livingston's 'The Traditional Theory of Literature' (Chapter 1: Preface and Prologue)
* Ray Livingston's 'The Traditional Theory of Literature' (Chapter 2: Man, Society, Art )
* Ray Livingston's 'The Traditional Theory of Literature' (Chapter 3: The Creative Process)
* Martin Lings’ The Sacred Art of Shakespeare
* J. K. Rowling’s ‘G-Spot’ and ‘Triple Play:’ The Lake & Shed Secret of Her Success
The Ring Readings of Rowling’s Hallmarked Man Chapter Sets
* Index to the Group Adventure of Charting Hallmarked Man (scroll to bottom)
* Ed Shardlow’s ring notes for Part Three
A. H. Murdoch’s Secrets of the Craft Excerpt in Hallmarked Man:
[Strike skim read the entry under Degree Thirty Two.]
The Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret becomes with the degree’s endowment none other than a Christian Knight, the spiritual and legitimate successor of the Knights Templar…
When she elevates and illuminates, a pure and chaste woman is as silver, or the moon. The […] Freemason is sure never to mistake base lead for the nobler metal, else he may find himself forever entombed in the dungeons of lust and lasciviousness. (ch 53, pp 400-401)
The parenthetic ellipsis is in text, presumably there because “Murdoch’s book hadn’t been properly formatted, but scanned into digital form, so that the occasional word was illegible.”
The Ten Questions
1. We have a special guest today, Ed Shardlow, the author of a commissioned post that went up this week, one we begged him to write up. It’s a weird post erven for a site that embraces the exotic, weird in the sense that it’s actually three posts rolled into one. What’s up with that, Ed?
2. So the three topics are:
* The charms on the Christmas gift bracelet Strike gives to Robin;
* The meaning of Todd Jameson’s name; and
* Robin’s sight and memory issues, ‘Venetian Blinds’
Is there a thread running through these ideas?
3. Tell us your charm bracelet idea and the meaning you think each charm has --
4. And it’s a ring, right? What a hoot. --
5. I loved the charm bracelet piece, not only because you read it as a ring and showed that the charms together and separately act as something of a cipher for the book, but because you linked it with Rowling’s Strike 9 charm bracelet. Do you think per Shanker’s advice that Rowling-Galbraith is giving us jewelry as a gift, one that acts as a key to the work in Hallmarked and before Evangeline, because she wants to make up with us for the hardship readers are having with the book?
6. True confession, though I was laughing out loud and delighted with your breaking the Todd Jameson cryptonym, I was also pretty disappointed; that name was number 1 on my not-yet-written third cryptonym post. What consoles me is that I doubt I would have picked up on what you saw, which is mind-blowing. Tell us how you figured it out as well as what you found --
7. Now this is a new variant of Rowling-Galbraith inserting a text within the text. This ectopic sub-story isn’t a written text, a fairy tale, an epigraph, a song playing in the background, an illustration based on a mad detective’s Tarot card throws, or the story the bad guy is selling that we have to unwind and re-write; we’ve seen those books-inside-the-book before. This is Rowling concealing a narrative inside the narrative with really only the name to act as the cipher for the coded message. Hence her talking up the importance of names in this book (e.g. Jolanda -- violets)?
8. You make a fascinating connection with Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, and Todd Jameson, the Son Who Killed His Mother (?). Do you think she finally wrote in a Chosen One echo in the Strike series via Jameson?
9. I want to leave the board here because I know you have to run -- thank you for joining us on such short notice! -- and talk about something you’ve been sharing on the Moderator’s Back Channels, namely, A. H. Murdock. His Secrets of the Craft is another text within a text, right? Have you thought about his name or why Rowling gave his book that title?
10. When will you be done with The Ickabog project? Inquiring minds want to know!


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hogwartsprofessor.substack.com/subscribe