JK Rowling has revealed her abusive ex-husband hid the manuscript for the first Harry Potter novel in a bid to stop her from leaving him.
The author said Portuguese TV reporter Jorge Arantes kept the pages of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone like a "hostage" and she feared he would burn them. After discovering where the manuscript was, she secretly started photocopying a few pages each day to ensure her work would not be lost.
Rowling, 57, married Arantes in 1992 after meeting him in a bar in Portugal where she had moved to work as a teacher following her mother's death. The couple had a daughter Jessica, now 29, but she left in 1993 after Arantes dragged her out of their home and attacked her.
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She said: "The marriage had turned very violent and very controlling. He was searching my handbag every time I came home and I didn't have a key to my own front door. It was a horrible state of tension to live in because I had to act as though I wasn't going and I don't think I'm a very good actor.
"That's a terrible way to live and yet the manuscript kept growing, I had continued to write. He knew what that manuscript meant to me because at a point he took the manuscript and hid it. That was his hostage.
"When I realised I was definitely going to go, I would take a few pages of the manuscript into work every day, just a few pages so he wouldn't realise anything was missing, and I would photocopy it.
"Gradually in a cupboard in the staff room, bit by bit, a photocopied manuscript grew and grew because I suspected that if I wasn't able to get out with everything he would burn it or take it and hold it hostage.
"That manuscript meant so much to me and it was the thing that I prioritised saving. The only thing I prioritised beyond that was my daughter but at that point she was still inside me so she is as safe as she can be in that situation."
Describing the night she walked out on Arantes, Rowling said: "There came a night where he became very angry with me and I cracked and I said 'I want to leave'. He became very violent and he said 'You can leave but you're not getting Jessica, I'm keeping her, I will hide her'.
"So I put up a fight and I paid the price. There was a violent scene which terminated with me lying in the street. I went to the police and filed a complaint and the next day went back to the house with the police and got Jessica."
The author said she had fiercely protected her privacy after becoming famous because of her fears of being tracked down by Arantes. She revealed he had followed her to Edinburgh and broken into the first home she bought with money from her publishing deal for her debut Potter novel, which was published in 1997.
She said: "I was so ill-equipped for what happened to me. It was changing faster than I could deal with and all the time I had this lurking fear because I know there is someone out there who does not wish me well.
"The reason we left the first place was my ex-husband arrived and broke in. Moving became quite a pressing issue at that point.
"I was trying to reconcile suddenly having a lot of press interest with really, really wanting to live under the radar for very concrete reasons. I was living in a state of real tension I couldn't express to many people."
Arantes has previously admitted he had been violent towards her on the night she left.
He said: "She refused to go without Jessica and, despite my saying she could come back for her in the morning, there was a violent struggle. I had to drag her out of the house at five in the morning, and I admit I slapped her very hard in the street."
Rowling, who has been married to Dr Neil Murray since 2001, finished the Potter novel while living as a single mother on benefits in Edinburgh.
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