Has JK finished with Harry?

At first, they appeared as if by magic at the beginning of every summer.

But a two-year gap since the last instalment of the Harry Potter series has left anxious fans wondering if the spell has finally been broken.

Some claim the author J K Rowling may have succumbed to writer's block.

Others say that perhaps she has other things on her mind.

Now her British publisher has been forced to admit he has no date for the launch of the fictional boy wizard's fifth adventure - and has yet to see a word of it.

Nevertheless, Bloomsbury chairman Nigel Newton insisted yesterday the author is ' happily writing away'. Miss Rowling, 36 - whose first four books have sold almost 140million copies around the world, earning her an estimated £220million fortune - originally planned seven books for the series.

The first Harry Potter novel was published in July 1997, with a new one launched in Britain every July until 2000.

Since then, the flow has stopped.

When Miss Rowling embarked on the series, she said she had 'mapped out' the plots for almost all the books.

So naturally it was expected that the fifth title, Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix, would be released last summer. Then in May came the official confirmation that it would not appear this year.

But the key to its disappearance may lie in its very success. The bespectacled boy wizard is said to have made Miss Rowling the 13th richest woman in Britain.

On Boxing Day last year, she married 30-year-old anaesthetist Neil Murray in a secret ceremony.

Earlier this year, her biographer, Sean Smith, said: 'She has more money than she ever dreamed of and a happy private life. The propulsion to write has disappeared. Creativity comes out of adversity.'