Back in 2005, the fate of Harry Potter was important enough that GCHQ reportedly stepped in to stop a potential leak of the sixth book in the series, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

In a radio interview last week, Nigel Newton of Bloomsbury Publishing spoke about how the publisher had employed strong security measures to prevent possible leaks, including guard dogs and a constant security presence at the printing press. Seemingly, the company also had the support of GCHQ, the UK's primary signals intelligence and surveillance agency.

"We fortunately had many allies," Newton said. "GCHQ rang me up and said, 'We've detected an early copy of this book on the Internet.'"

But as luck would have it, the copy that GCHQ had discovered was a fake: "I got them to read a page to our editor," Newton continued, "and she said, 'No, that's a fake.'"

When asked about Newton's story, a GCHQ spokesperson responded with a rare flash of humanity: "We do not comment on our defence against the Dark Arts."

We'll probably never know what GCHQ might've done had it turned out to be a real leak. Harry Potter, as the UK's only great artistic endeavour since the Rolling Stones and William Turner, is surely important enough to be guarded like a state secret. It's nice to imagine a crack team of spooks jumping into unmarked cars and shutting down a bunch of key distribution points in the London Docklands to prevent the spread of a leaked book.

The next Harry Potter instalment is coming in July, in the form of a West End play called Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Rather unusually, due to the "epic nature of the story," the play will be a two-part performance: you buy a ticket for one night, and then you have to go a second time to see the conclusion. The play will also be published as a book on July 31.