While recuperating from a fiendish chest infection over the past week, I've been reading the Molesworth books written by Geoffrey Willans and illustrated, famously, by Ronald Searle. These books are the mispelt, illustrated musings of Nigel Molesworth a schoolboy at St Cuthbert's, a fictional prep school for boarders. The series was written originally as a boy's-eye version of the earlier St Trinian's stories created by Ronald Searle.
In one of the original quartet of the Molesworth 'novels', How to Be Topp, our hero complains that Latin often comprises reading ancient plays in the original vernacular. He emphasises his point by writing one himself, entitled 'The Hogwarts', under the nom de plume Marcus Plautus Molesworthus.
Lightbulb flashed yet? Despite what Joanne Rowling may say, I reckon she must be a fan of Molesworth, and used the name 'Hogwarts' for her school of witchcraft and wizardry as an homage to the series. Many of the incantations used by characters in the Harry Potter stories are in a form of cod Latin, which could be subtle references to the 'How to Be Topp in Latin' source. And Harry Potter himself even looks like N. Molesworth.
All very interesting and new to me, if already spotted by Potter fans and academics in cyberspace up to ten years ago.
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