JK Rowling offers to review Nicola Sturgeon's memoir for free in newspapers

The Harry Potter author, who has repeatedly criticised the former first minister over her views on trans rights and the principle of self-identification, joked she was “ready to take one for the team”.

She recently hit out at Ms Sturgeon after the Scottish Government said it still had confidence in NHS Fife despite the ongoing fallout over an employment tribunal involving nurse Sandie Peggie.

Ms Peggie was suspended from her work at the Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy, Fife, in January last year after she objected to Dr Beth Upton, a trans woman, using the female changing room in the A&E department.

Writing on social media, Ms Rowling said: “This is Nicola Sturgeon's legacy: a government that publicly backs the hapless, unprofessional, ideologically captured health board that's persecuting a nurse for asserting her legal right to a single-sex changing room.”

The author was a fierce opponent of Ms Sturgeon’s planned gender reforms, which aimed to make it easier for trans people to change their legal gender.

Opponents raised concerns this would undermine women’s sex-based rights, such as access to women-only spaces, and the legislation was later blocked by the UK Government.

In 2022, Ms Rowling posted a photo of herself to social media wearing a t-shirt calling the former first minister a “destroyer of women’s rights”.

Ms Sturgeon’s memoir, Frankly, is due to be published next month.

In a review quoted on Amazon, the author Andrew O’Hagan called it a “triumph”, adding: “Frankly is the most insightful and stylishly open memoir by a politician since Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father.”

Responding to an article in the Daily Mail that featured political opponents ridiculing the comparison with Mr Obama, Ms Rowling wrote on X: “Calling all British newspapers: I am available to review Nicola Sturgeon’s memoir. No fee required as long as you don’t edit out the swear words.”

Replying to a follower, she added: “Maybe I’ll just post it on my website. With extra swearing.”