Potter author donates 1m pounds to Labour Party

LONDON: Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling has donated one million pounds (1.3 million euros, 1.8 million dollars) to Britain's governing Labour Party, it announced Saturday.

The donation is a much-needed shot in the arm for Prime Minister Gordon Brown's debt-ridden party, which has been trailing the main opposition Conservatives by as many as 28 percentage points in the polls, and comes as Labour is set to kick off its annual party conference.

Rowling -- who was a single mother in Edinburgh surviving on state benefits when she was writing the first in the series about the bespectacled boy wizard -- said she backed the government's efforts to reduce child poverty, and opposed Conservative plans to give tax breaks to married couples.

The 43-year-old author now has a fortune totalling around 560 million pounds, according to the latest Sunday Times Rich List.