Review: Warner Bros. Studio Tour London - The Making of Harry Potter

As a self-confessed Potterhead, I'm a little bit embarrassed that it's taken me so long to visit the Warner Bros. Studio Tour. 

Then again, I'm a purist, and don't love the films (I like them, but there's no love), so perhaps it's right that it's taken me a while. Going on the tour, though, has given me a new appreciation for the films.

Based in the Warner Bros. studios in Leavesden, where much of the interior shots of the Harry Potter films were done, the tour consists of one really massive warehouse, one still quite big warehouse, and an outside bit connecting the two together.

Our tickets were in the first time slot of the day, which was great because the attraction was busy enough to feel lively, but not busy enough that we couldn't see anything.

While waiting for the doors to open, staff were giving out tour "passports". When I asked for one, I was told they were just for children, but a moment later the woman I spoke to tapped me on the shoulder and sneakily handed me one - woo! I just wanted it as a souvenir, but I did collect the stamps on the way round the tour, which was fun.

After a short film, we headed into the Great Hall from Hogwarts. The actual Great Hall. It's set up as though filming will start any minute, and has costumes from the films dotted around the place, including Daniel Radcliffe's first Hogwarts uniform - it's tiny.

There's a guide in the Great Hall who gives you a speech, but after that you're on your own, which is how I liked it. You can buy digital guides, but save your money and just savour what you're seeing. If you have questions there's plenty of information boards around, and all the staff on duty are Potter experts.

The first warehouse is full to the brim with everything from costumes to sets (the Potions classroom is stunning) to props to broomsticks. We took our time taking in things like the boys' dormitory, Dumbledore's office and the massive sculpture from the Ministry of Magic in The Deathly Hallows.

We couldn't resist a go on the broomsticks. While the experience is great - you dress up in robes, sit on a broomstick in front of a green screen and then fly through London - you're not allowed to take any photos, since the tour wants you to buy their photos of you. It's disappointing, but the experience was fun. Plus, we took so many photos of everything else (you can see a few of the 200-plus I captured above) we didn't need to buy the broomstick ones.

One of my favourite parts was the huge cabinet full to the brim with things like copies of The Quibbler and The Daily Prophet, the admission letters to Hogwarts Harry receives and dozens of sweets and products from Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes. Like everything else in the room, they're all genuine props from the films.

We then headed outside - make sure you see everything because the tour is forward only, no going back. The outside area includes the external sets for the Hogwarts bridge and Number 4 Privet Drive, as well as the giant chess pieces used in the film, the Knight Bus, and Hagrid's Motorbike and the Weasleys' car, all of which provided plenty of great photo opportunities.

Then it was on to the second warehouse, which was much more technical than the first. It included information on all the models made for the production, plus magnificent, detailed architectural drawings of just about everything they ever built. I thought the highlight of the tour was going to be the Diagon Alley set, which is housed in this second warehouse, but it was eclipsed at the last minute by the massive model of Hogwarts, which was used for swooping external shots.

At just over £21 each for me and three children, I thought before going the ticket was pretty expensive, but on reflection it's well worth the price. However, the tour does make its money in other ways - the most expensive gift shop I've ever come across at an attraction (I forked out almost £15 for a notebook), and extortionate prices for pictures of you riding a broomstick in front of a green screen.

If you can keep from spending all your galleons, sickles and knuts in the gift shop, the Warner Bros. Studio Tour is a perfect half day out for any Harry Potter fan.

Book of the month - August 2013

A few days late, but the best book I read in August was...

 

Noble Conflict by Malorie Blackman was a great dystopian novel, with brilliant characterisations and a great plot (my review here). Go read it if you haven't!

What was the best book you read in August?

The Sunday Post (#21) and Showcase Sunday (#7)

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimba the Caffeinated Book Reviewer, and Showcase Sunday is hosted by Books, Biscuits and Tea and inspired by Pop Culture Junkie and the Story Siren. They're a chance to share news, a post to recap the past week on your blog, highlight our newest books and see what everyone else received for review, borrowed from libraries, or bought.

Book stuff this week on Girl!Reporter
Top 10 Tuesday (#13) - most memorable secondary characters
Review - The Universe Versus Alex Woods by Gavin Extence
My week in books (#7) - a magnificent library, funniest fictional families, summer reading and Seamus Heaney

Books I added to my shelves

From the library I picked up Elmore Leonard's Djibouti, which looks fascinating. And from Books, Biscuits and Tea I won Talking to the Dead by Harry Bingham, which has a cool double cover (thanks Vicky!).

What have you been up to this week? 

My week in books (#7)

My week in books is a feature where I share things I've found interesting from the past week that concern books, literature and all things book blogging.

If you were 16 again and ordered by teachers to read this summer, what titles would you be unlocking on your Kindle or Nook? That's the question being answered here in an AARP post about reading lists for 2013. Let me know what you read/are reading at school in the comments.

You can't choose your own family, but you can definitely choose the fictional ones you hang out with. Here, author Jeremy Strong picks his top 10 funniest fictional families (yes to Matilda's weird family and to the Funnybones!).

You might have heard about the new Library of Birmingham. Rather than cutting back on library services, the city has invested millions in a huge building to house books and computers and DVDs and all sorts of other things. It opens on September 3, but you can take a peek here now.

Lisa Tuttle writes in The Guardian here about her favourite fantasy novels for 'people who don't like dragons or sexy vampires'! 

Vicky over at Books, Biscuits and Tea posted a review here of a cute Kindle cover that looks like the cover of a Jane Auten novel.

And finally, this week we lost another literary great - Seamus Heaney. His publishers, Faber, released a statement here, and they also published Digging, the opening poem from the first collection they published of his, Death of a Naturalist, here. Among my favourite lines by Heaney are the following, from The Cure at Troy (Heaney's version of Sophocles' Philoctetes), which seem a fitting way to end:

Human beings suffer,
they torture one another,
they get hurt and get hard.

Book review: The Universe Versus Alex Woods by Gavin Extence

There are two things in life that are certain, goes the saying - death and taxes. While there's not much of the latter in Gavin Extence's excellent debut novel The Universe Versus Alex Woods, there's certainly plenty of the former.

That's not to say that Universe is a morbid book, or even a sad one (most of the time). In fact, for a book about death, it's full of life and joy and love.

Seventeen-year-old Alex Woods is stopped at the Port of Dover. In the car next to him is a stash of cannabis and an urn of ashes. As Alex's story unravels, we get to know a boy whose life has been filled with the ordinary and the extraordinary, and with an unlikely friendship with the Kurt Vonnegut-loving pensioner down the road from him - Issac Peterson.

Told in the first person, this is a novel in which we get to know everything the forthright protagonist thinks, and he thinks a lot. Cerebral and precocious, Alex should be annoying. But he's not. He's honest and loveable and right in so many ways - the universe is the thing that's wrong.

Alex explains to the reader about the very weird thing that happened to him when he was 10 (dealing with death one) through to the diagnosis of his epilepsy (dealing with death two) to how the ashes on the seat in the car got on the seat in the car (dealing with death three) through to his questioning by Chief Inspector Hearse (come on, this one's obvious). And as he does we get to know a boy who turns into a young man who is driven by friendship and love and the desire to do good, and who is brave (what other 17-year-old could do what he did?) and kind and wise beyond his years.

In some ways Mr Peterson is Alex's opposite - he's cynical and angry and doesn't care much about day-to-day life (although he is a pacifist and active Amnesty International supporter). Until Alex makes him care. In any other story the wise old man would impart life experience on the young upstart - in Universe the roles are reversed and it's Mr Peterson who learns to live from Alex. Aside from that role reversal, the thing I loved most about Mr Peterson was that he accepted Alex for who he was, and never tried to change him.

Universe has a great supporting cast, including Alex's Tarot-card reading clairvoyant mother (who's actually pretty cool), Dr Weir and Dr Enderby (Alex's friend and his doctor respectively), and even the school bullies who unwittingly help cement Alex and Mr Peterson's friendship. Alex's world is a world full of people - we rarely see him talk much about surroundings (until Switzerland) without talking about the people in them extensively.

Perhaps what I loved most about Universe was that, even though it explored a divisive issue around death, it was primarily, in my mind, a book about people, and about friendship. When was the last time you read a great book that was just about friendship? It's been a long time for me, and I'm glad this was the book to bring me back to that type of characterisation. Despite its sad parts, Universe was uplifting because of the central relationship - a friendship of the kind that few of us are lucky to experience in a lifetime, and that Alex did in his 17 years.

How I got this book: Won from the publishers, Hodder & Stoughton

Top Ten Tuesday (#13) - most memorable secondary characters

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish, where the writers, like me, are particularly fond of lists.

This week's topic is...top 10 most memorable secondary characters. For the purposes of this top 10, I'm going to take secondary to mean anyone who wasn't the protagonist, regardless of how big their role was.





1. Ron Weasley - the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling
Ron was everything a best friend and sidekick should be, and I loved every glimpse we got of him and his life.

2. Hermione Granger - the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling
As above, Hermione was a great secondary character. Without both her and Ron, the Harry Potter books, and Harry himself, would not have been as brilliant as they were.

3. James - All Our Yesterdays by Cristin Terrill
A really intriguing secondary character, I wanted to know a lot more about James.

4. Mr Peterson - The Universe Versus Alex Woods by Gavin Extence
I'm not actually finished with this book yet, but I love Mr Peterson for his wit and his acceptance of Alex.

5. Isabel - The Wolves of Mercy Falls trilogy by Maggie Stiefvater
I loved Isabel so much, and really, really wanted to see more about her life. I thought her story was as powerful as the protagonist's, a sign of a really good secondary character.

6. Gus - The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
Oh Gus. What is there to say? A wonderful secondary character who we fall in love with as Hazel does.

7. Lula - The Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich
I recently reviewed Notorious Nineteen and said the series wasn't as good as it was when it first started. Lula, however, is still as hilarious as she was in the first book, maybe even more so. She's everything a sidekick shouldn't be, but it works.

8. Jasper Cullen - The Twilight Saga by Stephanie Meyer
Edward and Bella - *yawn*. Jasper, on the other hand, was a fascinating character and I wish we'd spent more time with him.

9. Gilbert Blythe - Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery
I loved Gilbert, and his and Anne's relationship was easily the most fascinating of the book for me when I was younger.

10. Justin - Dance of Shadows by Yelena Black
Justin is a character we don't know a whole lot about, but what I saw of him I really liked. I assume he will play a bigger part in the sequel.

Who are your favourite secondary characters?