Book Notes would like to publicly celebrate the penultimate series of promotional Harry Potter stories, leaked annually by JK Rowling's publishers to a press salivating for fresh HP news. 

Privacy legislation is necessary because of the conduct of journalists and newspapers, and no other reason. This needs to be loudly asserted in the debate that follows the publication of the Defamation Bill 2006 and the Privacy Bill 2006, both designed to address the situation pertaining to libel and related issues. If journalism had been capable of voluntarily behaving decently and responsibly, it would not be necessary to create a formal legislative framework to protect privacy.

One of the first victims of literacy PC was Enid Blyton. She was deemed to be racist, middle class, facile and mind-dulling. The Americans even decided that for Noddy to share a bed with Big Ears indicated a gay relationship. Yet Blyton continued to be the 20th century's most successful (annual sales of €10m) and prolific (700 books) writers.

Rosita Sweetman reviews two compelling books on the devastating effects of the nuclear and petrochemical companies

Michael McDowell's simultaneous presentation of a new defamation bill and a new privacy bill was greeted with mixed reactions by the newspaper industry.

We all know, in this part of Ireland, that the North is awash with sectarian hatred and bigotry. However, we prefer to close our eyes and our ears, pretending either that both sides are just the same, or that republicans have in some mysterious way "provoked" the sectarianism that is endorsed by unionist politicians, especially in the DUP but not exclusively so.

In Clare Allen's remarkable debut novel, two 'dribblers' at a London psychiatric hospital need to prove their insanity in order to escape. Review by Tom Barbash

McDowell had nothing to say about the implications of the judgement, whether he thought it was right, whether he had anticipated it, whether the courts had been wrong in the earlier case which had found a 1935 act, or part of that act, unconstitutional. Nothing about the dangers facing children from sex abusers and what might be done to protect them. Just about himself and how right he had been all along.

Colin Murphy visits the new Mill Theatre in Dundrum town centre

The greatest player of his generation burned out in a cloud of controversy so spectacular that it totally overshadowed Italy's
World Cup win, writes Ken Early