Harry Potter fans eagerly awaiting publication of the next book on 16 July can improve their vocabulary with the help of quotations from previous instalments in the new Oxford Primary Dictionary, The Guardian said.
'Malevolent', for example, is illustrated by a description of Professor Snape as 'like a large and malevolent bat'.
Meanwhile, The Times revealed that Harry Potter might never have made it to print were it not for eight-year-old Alice Newton. In 1996 she was given a chapter of the unpublished first book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, by her father Nigel, chairman of the Bloomsbury publishing house, and loved it so much she persuaded him to publish it.
The storytelling TV show 'Jackanory' is set for revival, The Guardian said.
The programme, which ran from 1965 to 1996, will be shown on digital CBBC as a series of specials, probably in time for Christmas 2006.
