As we’re approaching the Easter weekend, I thought I’d write my blog this week on what, to me, is the most important aspect of the holiday: chocolate.

Chocolate has invaded our lives lately (not that we’re complaining). Recently we girls in the office were lucky enough to each receive a free, and very large, bar of Dairy Milk, thanks to the boys from the Quarantine Productions office downstairs, who seem to be getting paid in chocolate for their work on an upcoming Cadbury’s promotion (more on this another day as I play a small part in it…). And the media’s latest food story has centred around the rather tenuous claim, ‘Chocolate may help keep people slim‘.

Inevitably, my thoughts turned to chocolate in the world of literature. It seemed an odd topic at first, but the more I thought about it, the more I realised that it makes an appearance in many books. The most obvious is of course Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, where chocolate appears as a delicious (and potentially sinister) temptation. Another popular children’s author also seems to have an obsession with chocolate – J.K. Rowling, anyone? In Harry Potter we not only encounter leaping Chocolate Frogs, but chocolate also helps to fend off the soul-chilling effects of the Dementors. (I’ll stop there, before I reveal just how much I know about Harry Potter. I can’t help it – I’m of the Potter generation!)  And chocolate again takes on a magical quality in books like Joanne Harris’s Chocolat and Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate. Both of these books are of the magical realist genre – where everyday life is imbued with the strange and supernatural  – and chocolate seems to be the focal point of their magic.

So as you tuck into your Easter egg this weekend, make sure you savour it – some of our best authors claim it as our most magical food! And keep reading the title of the above BBC article, so you don’t feel too guilty about it.

Sara Magness, Editorial Administrator