BOOK REVIEW Harry Potter Film Wizardry Brian Sibley

A spellbinding book

Whatever you think of the Harry Potter films, there’s no denying that the various design departments have worked some serious magic across the series. Okay, they had budgets that could have pulled Ireland out of financial crisis, so you’d expect the best, but the imagination of their designs and attention to detail has always been astonishing.

A lot of that detail is easily missed in blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shots, so it’s good to have this simply sumptuous book to redress the balance. We’re rarely seen a making-of book so brilliantly designed, so gorgeously packaged and so entertainingly written, with contributions from all the key players from both sides of the camera.

But it’s more than just words and pictures. There are loads of great pull-outs as well, all completely authentic reproductions of props from the film: the Marauders’ Map, the letter inviting Harry to Hogwarts, stickers of labels from potions bottles, an invitation to the Yule Ball, a Ministry of Magic identity card... It looks like it should cost a fortune, but at £25 it almost seems too cheap.

Dave Golder