'I was driven out of my home' by press intrusion says JK Rowling

JK Rowling at the Leveson Inquiry yesterday (Reuters)

The Harry Potter author JK Rowling yesterday described how sustained newspaper scrutiny of her private life had made her vulnerable to "unbalanced individuals" by repeatedly publishing information that made her home identifiable.

Ms Rowling told the Leveson Inquiry into press standards that she had taken action against publications about 50 times over alleged breaches of privacy and misreporting as part of a 12-year running battle with newspapers which she said had included being driven out of the first house she owned because of the constant presence of photographers.

In rare and candid testimony about the unwanted effects of the global fame generated by the success of the Harry Potter novels, which have reputedly made her a dollar billionaire, the author repeatedly highlighted the photographing of her children and attempts to write about her children as evidence of the intrusions of the press.

On one occasion she had discovered a note from a journalist inside her then five-year-old daughter's schoolbag and in another incident she claimed a reporter had contacted her daughter's headmaster with a false claim that she had upset her classmates by revealing that Harry Potter died in the final book in the series.

The 46-year-old writer said she was particularly concerned about the publication of stories which, when put together, she said, led to the location of her homes in Edinburgh and elsewhere in Britain becoming identifiable. She added that she was "literally driven out" of her home in the Scottish capital after photographs appeared identifying the house number and street name.

She said: "I have on occasion been the target of unbalanced individuals. I don't want to go into details. On a number of occasions the police have been involved because of incidents or even threats. "

Describing her testimony as a plea for "normal" rather than "special" treatment by the media, she added: "It is not normal for my address to be known to millions of newspaper readers or all over the internet."

The inquiry was told that publication by a celebrity magazine of photograph taken of Ms Rowling's eldest daughter in a swimsuit at the age of eight while on a beach in Mauritius had remained available on the internet for months despite a ruling by the Press Complaints Commission that it should not have been published.

The author said she had been told there was no evidence that she had been a victim of phone hacking.