President Nicolas Sarkozy bestowed the title of knight in the
Legion of Honor on Rowling, who used her acceptance speech
to apologize for the quality of her French accent and for
having given one of the villains in her series a French name.
One of her great-grandfathers, who was French, had received
it in 1924 for his courage in the Battle of Verdun during
The British writer leapt to worldwide fame with the 1997
publication of “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s
Stone,” the first of her mega-hit seven-part series.
In 2003, even before it was translated into French,
“Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” — the
fifth book in the series — became the first book in English
ever to top the French best-sellers’ list.
Source: http://www.nj.com/newsflash/index.ssf?/base/entertainment-12/123368486248140.xml&storylist=entertainment
