The book starts out with a visit to the PM by Fudge. I'm guessing that if the 6th book is taking place in the mid 90's that Tony Blair was PM at that time. I'm not sure, please correct me if I"m wrong.

Fudge comes and tells the PM that some of the things happening in the muggle world are being caused by Magic.

My question is this, was there really a hurricane in England? I remember weird weather there, water pipes freezing from extremely cold weather but I'm not exactly sure what year that was.

Then they talked about a collapsed bridge. Did any of these things take place.

I also noticed that the story starts a couple of days after the wedding of Lady Di and Prince Charles, and will end if book 7 sticks to a year the way the other books do, just about the time Lady Di was killed.

So, how is real life impacting the story?

The bridge could be The London Bridge?

I thought the books just took place in modern day, right now.

The Prime Minister would actually have been John Major I think in 1996 when HBP would have started (according to the NHN death date chronology). But Jo will avoid putting individual real events in the books for obvious reasons, so you won't find a Brockdale Bridge to collapse.

I was more curious about the weather. I didn't think she would include the bridge or something where real people would have died.
Just seems like I remember some really strange weather happening in England, like pipes freezing, and I thought there was a hurricane or something along those lines awhile back.

Major, I forgot about him. Was he in a long time?


As for the post about the stories being current. They aren't if you look at Harry's birthday and the fact that he started school when he was 11 then you know that the books are taking place in the past.

This topic will suit better in Princely Nook.

Mobilithreadus!

LL mod
You_won't_know_who

We don't really have proper hurricanes over here in England. But I dunno, if it was 1996 I'd have been five or six, so I really don't remember...

~*~ RockinRavenclaw ~*~

John Major was PM from 1990 until 1st May 1997. Following the time line of Nearly Headless Nick's Deathday party then Major was PM at the beginning of HBP. I don't remember any particularly weird weather at that time. I think we should allow JKR some artistic liscence with the time line. The PM she describes (to me anyway) is a very loose charicature of Tony Blair - especially the stuff about him getting the Chancellor of the Exchequer in to try and remove the portrait. Blair and his Chancellor have a notoriously fraught relationship - very funny in those terms!

I think you're right. The PM in 'The Other Minister' has a very Blair-ish feel about him even though the date is slightly wrong. He reminds me very much of the Tony Blair caricatures we get on comedy programmes, especially on the radio. We did have a very bad hurricane in Southern England in '87 (before your time, RockinRavenclaw!!) and another not-quite-as-bad one since but I don't remember any bridges collapsing (certainly not London Bridge) and roonwit's right, if something like that had happened in real life it would have been a tragedy which JKR would not have included. I think it's more that she weaves recognisable elements into the story than a sequence of real events.

I'm an American but he reminded me of Blair too. I was just wondering how loose she was or if there were actually those things going on.

I really just wasn't picturing Blair there at all. What I was curious about is whether she was actually describing the PM's office or if that is just what the PM's office is like in her world. Like in America the Presidents office is called the oval office. We've all seen it in movie and stuff, anyone in the country could tell you what it looks like. Do you guys have that in Britain where there is a certain office and everyone knows what it looks like and stuff? Cause I wasn't picturing the the PM as Blair but I was picturing Blair reading the book and that actually being his office and there is a painting like that on the wall and he is sitting there looking suspiciously at the painting and keeps shooting glances at it out of the corner of his eye.

Yeah, I really think we should... She's known for not being too good at maths...

Anyway, yeah, I got this whole Blair/Bush-vibe too. But I get it of Scrimgeour and Fudge. All this putting people in prison, because you can't find the people who really did it, sort of rings a few bells with me right now...

But I guess Jo's not really trying to make charicatures of certain people. More like a charicature of the typical, average "politician", you know, those corrupt ones you always see in the movies...

i doubt she'd put in anything about Lady Di's death as I think alot of people could and probably would take offfence to it, I think its better she keeps it vague enough to be real, but not specific to any events.

I don't think the books are set on a time line where the first one was 1991 and the second '92 and so on. Each book is set in the year that she wrote it in. I remember in GoF where Harry says in a letter to Sirius about how Dudley threw his Play Station or something out of the window and people said she made a mistake because they didn't have Play Stations back in '94. But GoF wasn't set in '94 it was in '99. The same with HBP. She was saying how what Voldemort is doing, which is basically terrorism, paralells what is going on in the muggle world where we are fighting a war on terror. And obviously this wasn't going on in '96 and '97.

Greenfire. The first playstation was in 94/95 I think. Remember JK started writing HP in the late 80's early 90s so it would make sense for it to work like that. HP lexicon has a good timeline I bealive

According to wikipedia the first time Playstations would have been available in the UK (and all of Europe)would have been on September 29 1995. I doubt Jo would have known this exact date, however... and the Playstation Dudley thows out the window isn't really an integral detail in the books. I have to agree that the Lexicon's dates are the soundest, despite the possible anachronism.

I felt that JKR wrote the PM caricature-like on purpose, in order that he wouldn't reflect any one PM specifically. His sort of bumbling, stuffed-shirt, self-important personality is just a cardboard cut-out of your basic politician, not to be a representation of any one specific politician. JKR has been very good about making these books fit in a sort of unknown time frame, there have been a few small pop culture references, the Playstation being one of them, but for the most part any clues to the actual years that they are set in based on culture is pretty much zilch. I tend to think that she has written the books this way on purpose, simply so that the books have a more timeless feel about them and could be read years from now without confusing pop culture references to muck it up. I think the NHN clue is the best way to determine the years the books are set in, and you only know this if you truly pay attention in CoS.