Quidditch Through the Ages by Kennilworthy Whisp

Title: Quidditch Through the Ages

Author: Kennilworthy Whisp

Publisher: Bloomsbury 

Source book: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by JK Rowling (Harry Potter #1)

Hermione Granger gets Quidditch Through the Ages from the school library, and lectures her fellow first years at breakfast. She and Neville are particularly nervous about learning to fly.

Did you know that there are 700 ways of committing a foul in Quidditch? Apparently all of them had happened during a World Cup match in 1473. The game first began to evolve on Queerditch Marsh? That Puddlemere United (founded 1163) is the oldest team in the Britain and Ireland league? And although people rarely died playing Quidditch, referees had been known to vanish and turn up months later in the Sahara Desert.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was published in 1997, and then in 2001 JK Rowling published a real world book of Quidditch Through the Ages using the nom de plume Kennilworthy Whisp.

Kennilworthy Whisp is also the author of Beating the Bludgers: A Study of Defensive Strategies in Quidditch 

and The Wonder of Wigtown Wanderers, He Flew Like a Madman.

Also available for Quidditch fans of all ages: The Beater’s Bible by Brutus Scrimgeour; 

Flying With the Cannons; 

The Noble Sport of Warlocks by Quintus Umfraville; 

Quidditch Teams of Britain and Ireland; and 

Handbook of Do-It-Yourself Broomcare.

And also featured or mentioned (or possibly shoved into a footnote): Theories of Transubstantial Transfiguration… although what on earth transfiguration has to do with Quidditch is anyone’s guess. But there we are.

Kennilworthy Whisp lives in Nottinghamshire and is a huge fan of Whigton Wanderers. He plays backgammon* enjoys vegetarian cookery and collects vintage broomsticks.

* My brother put a lot of effort into trying to make me play backgammon with him, but he threw such massive attacks of the sulks if he lost I gave it up almost at once. You won’t be surprised to learn that I wouldn’t play chess or Monopoly with him either. Don’t even think about card games.