JK: Mother's death inspired Harry

The author who created Harry Potter today revealed how the death of her mother inspired her to make him an orphan.

J K Rowling wrote the adventures of the young wizard as her mother, Anne, lost her 10-year battle with multiple sclerosis.

In an interview published today Rowling, whose success has brought her riches estimated at more than £500 million, also told how she has already written the final chapter of the final instalment in the seven-part Potter series and has started work on other children's books.

Speaking as she launched a personal drive to raise funds for research into MS, she said that the trauma of her mother's death still haunts her and has influenced her decision to kill off several characters in the books.

She said: "The night she died I had been staying with my boyfriend's family and I had gone to bed early, ostensibly to watch The Man Who Would Be King, but instead I started writing.

"So I know I was writing Harry Potter at the moment my mother died. I had never told her about Harry Potter.

"My books are largely about death. They open with the death of Harry's parents. There is Voldemort's obsession with conquering death and his quest for immortality at any price.

"So I understand why Voldemort wants to conquer death. We are all frightened of it."

Harry Potter has sold 300million books in 63 countries with some instalments selling three million copies within two days of going on sale.

The final chapter of Harry Potter is now locked away at her Edinburgh home along with the text of a "political fairy story" aimed at a younger audience. Rowling, 40, also admitted for the first time that she had struggled to cope with the fame that the success of Harry Potter brought her.

Now married to GP Neil Murray and with three children, Jessica, David and nine-month-old Mackenzie, she told Tatler: "I cannot really emphasise how unconnected I was when all this happened to me. I was totally obscure. So this world was very alien to me and I was scared rigid.