As a title, Harry Potter and the Potholes of Devon wouldn’t survive the editor’s pen – but sometimes life is more spellbinding than fiction. Just ask the villagers of Lustleigh, a few miles from where I live on Dartmoor, who have J. K. Rowling’s franchise to thank for making one of the lanes of their chocolate-box home usable again.

For years, Lustleigh residents have been cursed by gaping holes in the road surfaces. But last week the TV company HBO, which is filming in the village for its adaptation of the young wizard’s exploits, was forced to do what Devon County Council apparently couldn’t and fill in the holes on one path themselves. Quite why it has taken people who play make-believe for a living to do the job of politicians is a magical tale of incompetence without a happy endi

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