Politics of Harry Potter middle class, especially whenever Harry confronts his ludicrously dysfunctional and downright abusive adopted family, the Dursleys." The critic Anthony Holden wrote in "The Observer" on his experience of judging "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" for the 1999 Whitbread Awards. His overall view of the series was very negative—"the Potter saga was essentially patronising, very conservative, highly derivative, dispiritingly nostalgic for a bygone Britain." A review in "The Guardian" echoed this interpretation and stated that "despite all of the books' gestures to multiculturalism and gender equality, Harry Potter is a conservative; a paternalistic, One-Nation Tory, perhaps, but a Tory
The Magical Worlds of Harry Potter the characters, creatures and terms used in Rowling's book to classic literature and ancient history." "The Birmingham Post"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s Jayne Howarth added that the book is "fun to dip in and out of while reading the Potter stories and it illustrates just how clever these pieces of literature are." "The Magical Worlds of Harry Potter" has been praised for teaching children about literature and history. Theresa Tighe of the "St. Louis Post-Dispatch" commented that "grown-ups might like Colbert's book, too, because it painlessly exposes youngsters to Shakespeare, Chaucer, Ovid, Flaubert and more." In addition, Candice Nguyen of "The Oakland Tribune" said