HARRY Potter author JK Rowling may have sat in a Barrow coffee shop as she carried out research for her crime caper starring a serial killer.

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Writing under her pseudonym Robert Galbraith, her novel, Career of Evil, is to be serialised by the BBC and could see filming in the town.

The book mentions Ulverston as the “birthplace of Stan Laurel” and describes its lead characters, private detective Cormoran Strike and his assistant Robin, passing Craven Park, the home of Barrow Raiders.

They head to Cavendish Street, where they eat in the cafe, The Last Resort.

The book also references the Crows Nest pub, Olympic takeaway, Barrow Grammar School for Boys and BAE Systems.


Mike Stephenson. LINDSEY DICKINGS Last Resort owner Mike Stephenson said: “There is so much detail in the book that she must have been here for a visit. She was known for writing her Harry Potter books in cafes.

“I’m off on a Thursday and Friday and I’m sure if she had been in while I was there I would have recognised her.

“It’s nice to see Barrow in a good light after what Bill Bryson said in his last book. He came with a pre-conceived idea.

“It’s nice to to think that someone like JK Rowling came to Barrow to do her research and came in the Last Resort and she enjoyed coming in.

“It’s not every day you get a best-selling novelist coming in.”

The book describes Barrow: “The initial impression was of a gigantic out-of-town retail centre, where the garish facades of high-street outlets confronted them on all sides, except that here and there, standing proud and incongruous between the DIY stores and pizza restaurants, were architectural gems that spoke of a prosperous industrial past.

“A little further and they came across rows and rows of terraced housing, the kind of cityscape Lowry painted, the hive where workers lived.

“Notwithstanding its unpropitious name, The Last Resort was cosy and clean, full of chattering old ladies, and they returned to the car park feeling pleasantly well fed.”

Speaking during a radio show this week, JK Rowling said of her book, the third in a series: “What’s nice about the Strike books is I don’t have an end point. I’m not as prescriptive as with the Potter books.

“I could probably go to 10, even beyond.”