JK: How my son inspired new book

HARRY Potter author JK Rowling has revealed how her son David inspired her new book – after she teased readers with clues at the beginning and end of the children’s story.

The bestselling author dedicated The Christmas Pig ‘To David’ and ended it with a thank you in the acknowledgements to her family, hinting it was perhaps inspired by a family moment ‘sitting on a sandy beach’.

She added: ‘All that remains to say is that any resemblance between the Things in these pages and the Things our family may have lost or found is, of course, entirely intentional.’

But yesterday, Rowling, 56, told Claudia Winkleman on Radio 2 that David, now 18, gave her the idea after finding a secret ‘spare’ cuddly pig at home and saying that it was a brother to his favourite toy.

She said: ‘This is I think the first time ever that I’ve had an answer to “Where did you get the idea?”, because normally I don’t know where ideas come from. But this book was inspired by my son David’s deep love for his toy pig when he was little. It was his very favourite toy, just a tiny little cuddly pig, and he couldn’t go to sleep without it, but he kept losing it.

‘I got so panicky about this that I bought a duplicate and hid it in a cupboard because I thought one day we might need a back up.’

The author added: ‘I got interested in what it would be like to be a replacement and that’s where the story started. ‘I’d always TOY STORY:

Cuddly pig gave JK Rowling idea for the plot wanted to write a Christmas story and when I had the idea for this story I thought, I’ve got it, I’ve got my Christmas story, because it just fits so perfectly.’

The new book, out on Tuesday, is about Jack, a boy who loses his treasured toy, a pig, who he has to rescue from the Land of the Lost.

Ms Rowling famously began writing her Harry Potter series as a young mother in Edinburgh, scribbling away in coffee shops such as The Elephant House Cafe. More than 500 million books in the best-selling tales of the boy wizard have been sold.

The success of Harry Potter has seen Ms Rowling amass a fortune of £820 million.