JK Rowling was not joking when she said her next book would be "very different" to the magical world of Harry Potter. Yesterday it emerged her first novel aimed at adults would follow parish council elections in an English market town. The celebrated British author's first book in five years will be called The Casual Vacancy, and will be a "blackly comic" tale of an idyllic English town at war itself, the publishers revealed.

Harry Potter stars turned out yesterday at the red carpet opening of a studio tour which gives fans a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the blockbuster film series.

Fifteen-year-old fan Holly Hatfield guides us – and her dad – through the astonishing new Warner Bros Harry Potter tour near Watford

Tomorrow, The Making of Harry Potter tour opens to the British public – and it's wizard, says 15-year-old Holly Hatfield, who's had a sneak peek

A star of the Harry Potter films was today sentenced to two years in prison for being part of a violent mob which took to the streets during last summer's riots in London.

Harry Potter author JK Rowling has signed a deal to publish her first novel for adults.

"Aha! Oho! Marks in the snow! Whose are these claw marks? Where do they go?"

Blockbuster movies part-filmed in the UK are expected to boost "location vacation" tourism in 2012. Castle Combe, in Wiltshire, prominent in Steven Spielberg's War Horse, and Layer Marney Tower near Colchester, used in The Woman in Black, are two locations hoping for a boom in visitors.

With the Harry Potter valedictory lap, replete with fans declaring their childhood officially over and photo-montages tracking its junior cast from pre-teen to young adults, finally over, people may be surprised that the franchise's first youngster onto their next blockbuster role, isn't Harry, Hermoine or Ron, but their scheming nemesis Draco Malfoy, aka actor Tom Felton, with his lead role in new prequel Rise of the Planet of the Apes.