Commentary Why are so many children drawn to books in which the parents are absent—death or abandonment—and the step-parent or guardian hostile? From “Snow White” to “Cinderella,” through “Anne of Green Gables” and “Harry Potter,” these stories take flight from a parentless child’s insecurity and loneliness. The answer, I think, is that children’s deepest fears…

Commentary Cancel culture is in its own way democratic. Woke mobs—social media jackals or institutional flacks—don’t care whether their target for immolation is male or female, famous or obscure, a leading intellectual light or a plodding time-server. All their targets have in common is an audience. A classroom, a Twitter account, a pulpit. The pilot…

LONDON—Robbie Coltrane, the larger-than-life Scottish actor who played the beloved half-giant Hagrid in the Harry Potter films, died on Friday at the age of 72, his agent said. Coltrane’s more than four-decade-long career ranged from roles in the James Bond films “GoldenEye” and “The World Is Not Enough” to the lead in the 1990s British…

One of the most inspiring themes from the movie “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,” “Hedwig’s Theme” was originally for orchestra only. The beautiful theme, composed by John Williams, has been arranged by Georgii Cherkin for piano and orchestra. Arranged and performed by Georgii Cherkin – piano Conducted by Maxim Eshkenazy with the Classic FM Orchestra Concert…

The demands of transgender activists and other progressives for Warner Bros. to stop producing films based on the fictional worlds of author J.K. Rowling, and for the studio to dissociate itself officially from Rowling and her work, are among the latest efforts to censor viewpoints and sources by exerting enormous public pressure on the corporations…

Warner Bros. censors gay dialogue for China. Is it for profit? Meanwhile, they are committed to celebrating the LGBTQ movement in the West. Why are they promoting a double standard? I speak with James Lindsay, author of “Race Marxism” and the founder of New Discourse. He is a leading expert on critical race theory and…

British actor Helen McCrory, who starred in the television show “Peaky Blinders” and the “Harry Potter” movies, has died, her husband said Friday. She was 52 and had been suffering from cancer. Her husband, fellow actor Damian Lewis, said McCrory died “peacefully at home” after a “heroic battle with cancer.” “She died as she lived….