She has three children. Her eldest is a daughter, Jessica, by her first marriage to Portuguese journalist Jorge Arantes. Jessica is now about 21 years old.

Rowling and her first husband divorced while Jessica was still a baby, and Rowling left Portugal and brought her daughter back to the UK. They went to live in Edinburgh, and it was there that Rowling famously did a lot of her writing of the first Potter book while sitting in a cafe to keep warm, as she had very little money.

In 2001 she married her second and present husband, an anaesthetist named Neil Murray, and they have two children: son David, born in 2003, and second daughter Mackenzie Jean, born in 2005.

Rowling has worked very hard to keep her family life private and allow her children as much normality as possible; she fought very hard against the intrusioin of the taboid press into her life some years ago, and has been one of the witnesses against Rupert Murdoch and his newspapers in the Leveson enquiry.