A Lake and Shed Reading of Lethal White

Today’s Lake and Shed framed conversation is about the fourth Cormoran Strike novel, Lethal White. Nick discusses the embedded class struggle in the book and its roots in Rowling’s background before dropping the bomb of the real world identity of Jack O’Kent and his unhappy family. John is so taken aback by this revelation that Nick has to prompt the Shed portion of the conversation with a fun history of the Sonia Friedman production of Ibsen’s Rosmersholm on London’s West End, a show starring Thom Burke as Rosmer and which ended just before Bronte Studios beginning the filming of Lethal White. John explains why Rowling might have had something to do with the teevee C. B. Strike gaining a memorized knowledge of this play before filming the fourth book’s adaptation.
New to the Lake and Shed Kanreki Birthday series? Here’s what we’re doing:
On 31 July 2025, Joanne Murray, aka J. K. Rowling and Robert Galbraith, will be celebrating her 60th birthday. This celebration is considered a ‘second birth’ in Japan or Kanreki because it is the completion of the oriental astrological cycle. To mark JKR’s Kanreki, Dr John Granger and Nick Jeffery, both Nipponophiles, are reading through Rowling’s twenty-one published works and reviewing them in light of the author’s writing process, her ‘Lake and Shed’ metaphor. The ‘Lake’ is the biographical source of her inspiration; the ‘Shed’ is the alocal place of her intentional artistry, in which garage she transforms the biographical stuff provided by her subconscious mind into the archetypal stories that have made her the most important author of her age. You can hear Nick and John discuss this process and their birthday project at the first entry in this series of posts: Happy Birthday, JKR! A Lake and Shed Celebration of her Life and Work (substack.com/redirect/de14d535-56e6-42ad-a223-…).
Tomorrow? Another work with Rowling’s name on the cover that is the not the work she wrote! Nick and John take a Lake and Shed long look at the second screenplay for the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them film series. On the Lake side of things, Nick explores the Johnny Depp casting scandal and the lead-up in 2018 to the 2019 Tweet Heard Round the World. John explains that the cut scenes from this dog’s mess of a movie point that the shooting script, i.e., what Rowling wrote and approved before David Yates butchered the film in the editing room, was all about Leta Lestrange. More important, John makes the Shed point that every Rowling book features a text of some kind that the characters struggle to understand — and that Crimes of Grindelwald has ten of these, a veritable library of interior texts to interpret.
Links to posts mentioned in today’s Lake and Shed conversation for further reading:
* Henrik Ibsen’s ‘Rosmersholm’ (hogwartsprofessor.com/lethal-white-ibsens-rosm…)
* Every ‘Rosmersholm’ White Horse Reference (hogwartsprofessor.com/lethal-white-the-origina…) (Odd Sverre Hove)
* London Production of Rosmersholm: Starring Tom Burke (Cormoran Strike) (hogwartsprofessor.com/london-production-of-ros…)
* London Production of Rosmersholm (2): Starring Tom Burke (Cormoran Strike) (hogwartsprofessor.com/london-production-of-ros…)
* The ‘Reading, Writing, Rowling’ podcast on (hogwartsprofessor.com/reading-writing-rowling-…)Lethal White (hogwartsprofessor.com/reading-writing-rowling-…) (Kathryn McDaniel, Louise Freeman, Beatrice Groves, John Granger)
* The Top Ten Things We’ve Learned About (hogwartsprofessor.com/lethal-white-the-top-ten…)Lethal White (hogwartsprofessor.com/lethal-white-the-top-ten…)Since Publication Day (hogwartsprofessor.com/lethal-white-the-top-ten…)
* The Three Things about J. K. Rowling’s Cormoran Strike Novels Every Harry Potter Fan Should Know (hogwartsprofessor.com/the-three-things-about-j…)
* Lethal White (hogwartsprofessor.com/lethal-white-the-ring-st…): The Ring Structure (hogwartsprofessor.com/lethal-white-the-ring-st…)
* Lethal White: (hogwartsprofessor.com/lethal-white-the-cratyli…)The Cratylic Names (hogwartsprofessor.com/lethal-white-the-cratyli…)
* Lethal White (hogwartsprofessor.com/lethal-white-autobigraph…): Autobiographical Elements (hogwartsprofessor.com/lethal-white-autobigraph…)
* Lethal White: (hogwartsprofessor.com/lethal-white-flints-and-…)Flints and Head Scratchers (hogwartsprofessor.com/lethal-white-flints-and-…)
Lethal White as Turning Point of Seven Part Ring Cycle
* Does (hogwartsprofessor.substack.com/p/reading-runni…)Lethal White (hogwartsprofessor.substack.com/p/reading-runni…)Foreshadow (hogwartsprofessor.substack.com/p/reading-runni…)Running Grave (hogwartsprofessor.substack.com/p/reading-runni…)? You Betcha (hogwartsprofessor.substack.com/p/reading-runni…)
* The Missing Page Mystery (hogwartsprofessor.com/lethal-white-the-missing…)
* The Missing Page Mystery, Part 2 (hogwartsprofessor.com/lethal-white-missing-pag…)
* Does (hogwartsprofessor.com/does-lethal-white-echo-g…)Lethal White (hogwartsprofessor.com/does-lethal-white-echo-g…)Echo (hogwartsprofessor.com/does-lethal-white-echo-g…)Goblet of Fire (hogwartsprofessor.com/does-lethal-white-echo-g…)? (hogwartsprofessor.com/does-lethal-white-echo-g…)
* Lethal White: (hogwartsprofessor.com/lethal-white-every-goble…)Every (hogwartsprofessor.com/lethal-white-every-goble…)Goblet of Fire (hogwartsprofessor.com/lethal-white-every-goble…)Link? (hogwartsprofessor.com/lethal-white-every-goble…)
* Lethal White: Cuckoo’s Calling (hogwartsprofessor.com/lethal-white-cuckoos-cal…)Retold? (hogwartsprofessor.com/lethal-white-cuckoos-cal…)
* The (hogwartsprofessor.com/cuckoos-calling-25-letha…)Cuckoo’s Calling (hogwartsprofessor.com/cuckoos-calling-25-letha…)Echoes (25+) (hogwartsprofessor.com/cuckoos-calling-25-letha…)
* Seven More (hogwartsprofessor.com/lethal-white-add-seven-c…)Cuckoo’s Calling (hogwartsprofessor.com/lethal-white-add-seven-c…)Links (hogwartsprofessor.com/lethal-white-add-seven-c…)
* Lethal White (hogwartsprofessor.com/lethal-white-the-big-cha…): The Big Change at the Turn (End of the Strike Agency in Strike5?) (hogwartsprofessor.com/lethal-white-the-big-cha…)
Literary Alchemy and the Mythic Context
* M. Evan Willis: The Mythic Context and Hermetic Meaning of Cormoran Strike (hogwartsprofessor.com/m-evan-willis-the-mythic…)
* Guest Post: Mythological Leda Strike – Cormoran, Zeus, Castor and Pollux (hogwartsprofessor.com/guest-post-leda-strike-r…) (Joanne Gray; prepublication)
* Guest …