Episode Description
Nick Jeffery and John Granger met on Wednesday this week to talk about John’s epic ‘Index to the First Year of Reading Hallmarked Man’ that was posted a week ago. Both were delighted (and a little surprised?) by the range and depths of the work done here and elsewhere to unpack the eighth Strellacott mystery, easily the most carefully planned and unique of the Strike series.
Below are the ten questions Nick and John asked one another, brief versions of their answers, and links to points they made for listeners wanting to read more about the subjects and previous work mentioned. The conversation ended with a big THANK YOU to the Hogwarts Professor subscribers and the announcement of an announcement (!) coming next week of Real Time conversation with those supporters.
Enjoy this conversation and the links below to highlights from the previous year - and stand by for some exciting news about the coming year’s work at Hogwarts Professor!
Hogwarts Professor is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
The Ten Questions, Answer Notes, and Links:
[Nota Bene: Nick’s questions to John are in Blue and John’s to Nick are red; Links with bullet points are Nick and John ‘Rowling Studies’ podcasts; non-bulleted links are posts.]
1 -- Happy Anniversary, John! Can you believe it’s been a year since Hallmarked Man was published? What Should we do in commemoration of the Strike Fandom Holiday?
* Three things? First, note how much our thinking about the Strike series has changed from our expectations about Strike 8 to our ever growing appreciation of the complexity and mysteries of Hallmarked Man;
* Next, maybe this is just me, but I wanted to chart somehow that progression and change from date of publication to where we are now, if only to get a clearer picture of where we’re headed – and
* Last, I want to have some kind of party, right? Some kind of gathering, the virtual kind obviously, to celebrate the milestones and our direction as readers --
2 -- So, Nick, I spent my weekend collating an Index of our Hallmarked Man Year’s Greatest Hits. The most shocking piece for me, frankly, was the amount of material we put up in the first months in addition to our podcasts. Do you remember the feeling of a second Kanreki blitz?
* Nick notes: stories of publisher bread crumbs and gaffes, ‘Robin is Sterile’ and ‘Charlotte was Murdered’ strikes, and fandom shock, disappointment and confusion;
* Our ‘hot takes’ here, reader speculations, beginning of Lake and Shed readings
From Hallmarked Man Index Post:
First Impressions: Overwhelm, Cryptonyms
* Three Cheers for The Hallmarked Man! Thoughts After the First Reading
* The Hallmarked Man: A ‘Blitz’ Lake and Shed Reading (with a few Golden Threads)
Hallmarked Man’s Flood of Names, Characters, and Plots
The Allegorical Cryptonyms of The Hallmarked Man, Part Three
Hallmarked Man as Key to Series Ending, Difficulty Intentional
* Hallmarked Man’s Three ‘Whose My Daddy?’ Set-Ups to Shock Readers in Strikes 9 and 10
* Why Hallmarked Man is the Best Cormoran Strike Novel and Will Be Considered the Key to Unlocking the Series’ Mysteries
Cupid and Psyche Template
* The Hallmarked Man’s Mythological Template
* Valentine’s Day Special: The Cupid and Psyche Myth within the Cormoran Strike Series: Both a Series Template and Traditional Delivery System for the Fundamental Choice in Human Existence, Eros vs Anteros
3 -- Rowling spurred that, John, with writing a very challenging book but also via the Cupid and Psyche tweet. Which of the flood of Fan Theories we discussed did you find the most intriguing?
* Robin Ellacott’s Imminent Death and Its Out of This World Effect on Strike: The Christian Text-Within-the-Text of Running Grave Subtly Suggests the Ultimate Twist in Cormoran Strike’s Transformation
4 -- Talking about Robin’s Immanent death and the Charlotte Campbell ‘Dirty Bomb’ were fun, but, Nick, the Fiona and Katya revelations about Shanker may have been the Peak of the Year’s Finds and Reveals, no?
The Mysterious Suicides of Leda Strike and Charlotte Campbell Revisited Post Hallmarked Man: Has Fiona Down Under Revealed the Murderers of both Strike’s Mother and Milady Bezerko? Was a Busted Drug Deal with Gangsters and Campbell-Longcaster Incest and Adultery behind it All?
Dementia, Jewelry, and a Nine Inch Cock: The Mystery of Shanker’s ‘Old Man,’ His Given Name, and Why He’s Never Killed Jeff Whittaker: Katya Slonenko’s Deductions from Shanker Comments about His Dear Old Dad in ‘The Hallmarked Man’
5 -- That was like reading Strike 9 in advance, John, wasn’t it? Shades of ‘Robin is Sterile’! But the wheels almost fell off the cart when it came to the Incest speculation. Funny that it was a Golden Thread through all her work, though, not just Hallmarked Man...
Incest Notes and Theories
6 -- But, Nick, what a Year for a Trip to the Lake -- Rowling’s Charlie Kirk tweets, the Charm Bracelet, the Congenital Blood Disease -- was your cup running over?
JKR — VWD!
Rowling Tweets About Congenital Blood Condition: von Willebrand Disease
* Hallmarked Man and Rowling’s Tweets after the Shooting of Charlie Kirk
The Troubled Blood of J. K. Rowling: Blood as a Golden Thread in all her Works
* Blood! The Crimson Thread: Exploring the Lake Inspiration of Blood in the Works of J. K. Rowling
The Christmas Charm Bracelet Conversations with Elizabeth Baird-Hardy:
* The Christmas Charm Bracelet of Strike 9 Clues (Part One)
* The Christmas Charm Bracelet of Strike 9 Clues (Part Two)
Rowling Tweets about Changed Beliefs — and Her Beliefs about “Religious Faith”
Perhaps the most important of Rowling’s revelations in the past year were the ones she made about her beliefs consequent to the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
Specifically on 12 September 2025 she wrote about the beliefs she has changed, in which tweet she concluded with thoughts about God and “religious faith:”
The distinction implicit in Rowling’s “God conundrum” is between (a) “religious faith,” conformity to the beliefs and practices of a specific revelation, and (b) belief in God. Her posture of enlightened agnosticism with respect to God, being unable to believe “without seeing proof,” while acknowledging the “God-shaped vacuum inside me,” an existential proof of same she experiences, is, frankly, only sophistry. It is verbiage draped over her all-too-human inability to reject those core beliefs she has qua postmodern that religious faith requires she reject for communion with God.
[If you struggle earnestly and honestly with these same issues, I recommend to you what I would to Rowling as I have to Nick, namely, that you read James Cutsinger’s Advice for the Serious Seeker and Ross Douthat’s Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious. What Chesterton said about Christianity is as true about “religious faith” in general, “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting but found difficult and left untried.” Pedestrian agnosticism and adolescent atheism today are less markers of sophistication and thoughtfulness, being ‘above the herd,’ than unthinking captivity to the zeitgeist and to one’s unexamined beliefs.]
7 -- That was a Big Year for us Lake Dwellers, John, but Hogwarts Professor, I think, will always be a Shed site until Rowling agrees to an interview with Veritaserum. And the Shed work we did with Hallmarked Man was significant; what was your favorite part of that?
‘The Group Adventure of Charting Hallmarked Man’ (Fourteen Posts) was a landmark event in Rowling Studies, frankly, and a proof that Strike 8 was one of if not THE most carefully planned novels — which proof serves as a corrective rebuke to readers who thought it was a careless melange of confusing and conflicting plot lines, the “worst of the series.”
* The Group Adventure of Charting Hallmarked Man’s Rings: Part Ten and Epilogue, Chapters 117-127 (post to the other thirteen posts in this series are at the bottom of this post)
8 -- For me the Gang of Five independent Ring Reading of Hallmarked Man will always be the stand-out of the past year. But you brought the Lake into the Shed with your Read-Along-with-Nick Book club this year! Two epic poems by the Brownings, a Bildungsroman classic by Dodie Smith, and another C. S. Lewis template -- what was the goal and what was the highlight for you in those readings?
Nick’s Reading List Online:
Rowling’s Admitted Literary Influences (December 2020)
Important Side Texts: The Ring and the Book, Aurora Leigh, I Capture the Castle,‘Till We Have Faces
The Ring and The Book – A Rowling Reading
* What the Hallmarked Man Epigraphs Reveal About Rowling-Galbraith’s Artistry and Meaning
A Rowling Reading of Aurora Leigh
* Talking About ‘A Rowling Reading of Aurora Leigh‘
A J. K. Rowling Reading of I Capture the Castle
* The Most Influential Book Rowling Read as a Child Wanting to Be a Writer is Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle
‘Till We Have Faces
C. S. Lewis’ ‘Till We Have Faces’ and Rowling-Galbraith’s Cormoran Strike Series (Part One) Is ‘Till We Have Faces’ the The Thematic Template for the ‘Strike-Ellacott’ Series?
C. S. Lewis’ ‘Till We Have Faces’ and Rowling-Galbraith’s Cormoran Strike Series (Part Two): John Granger’s thoughts on the seven points of intersection between CSL’s retelling of the Cupid and Psyche myth and JKR’s use of the same myth as a psychomachian story template
* A Spirited Conversation about Rowling-Galbraith’s Cormoran Strike Series and C. S. Lewis’ ‘Till We Have Faces’: What does the 1956 re-telling of the Cupid and Psyche myth tell Serious Strikers about Rowling’s re-imagining of the same tale
9 -- Our Paid Subscribers, John, had the opportunity to read Livingston’s Traditional Theory of Literature with you. That took up a lot of your band-space, I know, because it led to your Symbolism of G posts. Why did you think republishing Livingston on Coomaraswamy was so important?
In brief, Nick, it was because the most important work we did in Rowling Studies, I think, was not the exercise in Ring Reading that served as a demonstration of what we already suspected, but the synthesis change in how we read Rowling, namely, a shift in our Critical Perspective and Orientation. That was represented by our reprinting The Traditional Theory of Literature by Ray Livingston and our printing currently my PhD thesis draft on this same subject.
The Livingston part of this Hogwarts Professor project for Paid Subscribers served as an in-depth introduction to the Perennialist interpretation of fiction, the counter and correction to Critique and to the profane reading of sacred art-in-story. It is the republication by chapters of The Traditional Theory of Literature (University of Minnesota Press, 1962), a book by Ray Livingston that makes reading the otherwise inaccessible Ananda Coomaraswamy the transformative experience it is.
If you want to grasp what Rowling is all about, why she has chosen the Shed tools she has and what those choices reveal about her Dante-esque intentions as a writer, you need to wrestle with The Traditional Theory of Literature. Or you can read my PhD thesis draft on the same subject, ‘A Revelation of the Real: A Perennialist Reading of J. K. Rowling’s Work’!
Chapter Seven: Conclusion and Appendix
(links to all the other posted chapters are at the beginning of this post)
10 -- Nick, you talk about our Guests on the podcasts, please, and our Guest Posts. I think that’s an essential part of what we do here, but coming from you, one of the great discoveries of Hogwarts Professor, it will mean a lot more
Podcast Guests and Guest Posts:
Dimitra Fimi
* Reading Rowling as Myth Maker and Myth Re-Writer: A Conversation with Dr Dimitra Fimi
Ed Shardlow
Guest Post: The Pride of Lions in ‘The Hallmarked Man’: Ed Shardlow discusses the many lions on the surface, behind a corner, or well-concealed within Rowling-Galbraith’s Eighth Cormoran Strike Novel
Hallmarked Man Notes: The Christmas Charm Bracelet Decoded, Tod Jameson and the Ectopic Pregnancy, and Venetian Blinds: Ed Shardlow shares his ‘Nuggets of Silver’ about over-looked meanings in Rowling-Galbraith’s Hallmarked Man
* The Hidden Narratives and Interpretive Ciphers Beneath the Surface Story of Hallmarked Man: Ed Shardlow speaks with Nick Jeffery and John Granger about Stories inside the Strike 8 Story that Re-tell the Story and Explain Its Meaning
The Hallmarked Man Meets The Ickabog: Strike 8 and Rowling’s Fractured Fairy Tale are Parallel Texts
* The First Seven Strike Novels Paralleled Their Seven Harry Potter Equivalents; What Rowling Work Did The Hallmarked Man Parallel? Ed Shardlow makes the Argument in Conversation with John and Nick that Strike 8 is a Fun Re-Visiting of the Themes, Scenes, and Characters of Rowling’s ‘Ickabog’ Fairy Tale
Katya Slonenko
Dementia, Jewelry, and a Nine Inch Cock: The Mystery of Shanker’s ‘Old Man,’ His Given Name, and Why He’s Never Killed Jeff Whittaker: Katya Slonenko’s Deductions from Shanker Comments about His Dear Old Dad in ‘The Hallmarked Man’
Katya Slonenko: Leda Strike’s ‘Mistress of the Salmon Salts’ Pudenda Tattoo: Strike Fandom’s Leading Tattoo Artist Explains What Tattoos Mean in the Strike Novels and Explores Why Cormoran’s Mum Would Put a Song Title in Ink Where She Did
Solomon Schmidt
* A Pen to Change the World: Conversation with Solomon Schmidt, Rowling-Galbraith Biographer (Part One): Nick Jeffery and John Granger talk with Solomon Schmidt about the Adventure of Writing a Rowling Biography Today
* A Pen to Change the World: Conversation with Solomon Schmidt, Rowling-Galbraith Biographer (Part Two) — Nick Jeffery and John Granger talk with Solomon Schmidt about what he’d ask Rowling as a biographer if given the chance --and he asks them what they would ask, with and without Veritaserum
Conclusions: First Anniversary Status Quo
Three conclusions to an overly long Hallmarked Man Year One Review:
1. It’s Been a Great Year! I think we’re well positioned for Strike 9 and for another year of discoveries via a Slow Mining of Strike 8.
2. Next Year Promises to be Even Better! It may be a little slow in Strike fandom relatively speaking, but, with rumors of a Christmas Pig animated special and trailers for the adaptations of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in the air, we’re going to be very busy here. And —
3. We’ll Be Breaking New Ground Here as Always! We have found an online platform to host online courses and classes for sharing the heights, depths, and breadth of traditional reading, not to mention practical seminars in how to identify and use the tools that Rowling deploys.
All of which classes will be free or at a Close-to-Free discount for our Paid Subscribers here. That’s our thank you for your generosity and in acknowledgement of your brilliance. Stay tuned!
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