The Immortal Harry Potter (?)

Nicolette Jones believes J K Rowling's magic tales have become embedded in our cultural consciousness and will never be erased...

The tide of mentions may slow down now that the books are all published, though each film will cause a swell. Harry Potterisms may go out of fashion. The whole fuss could be shortlived, like the phase when everything we read or watched alluded to the Spice Girls or the Teletubbies. Then historians of the future will be able to date the products of our popular culture by the fact that they include references to J K Rowling's work.

But whatever happens, there will never come a day when Hogwarts, muggles, quidditch and Voldemort are meaningless names and words as they were only a dozen years ago, just as we cannot erase Neverland, Wonderland, Narnia, chortling, galumphing, boojums, heffalumps and woozles from our collective consciousness. Almost more surprising than the money and the fame is this legacy: a permanent place in a corner of everyone's imagination.

I still think the first of these quoted paragraphs is nearer the mark of what things will be like a hundred years from now.