Even world-renowned authors have not been spared the inconvenience of baggage restrictions on passenger flights, it would seem.

JK Rowling, creator of the phenomenally successful Harry Potter books, was almost stopped from boarding a plane back to Britain after refusing to stow her manuscript for the final book in her check-in luggage.

The writer has revealed that she was stopped by security officials in New York because she wasn't prepared to hand over her top secret notes for the yet-to-be-named book seven, which will reveal Harry’s much anticipated fate.

Such was the calamity of the situation that Ms Rowling said she was prepared to sail back home on board ship, to ensure that she was not parted from the handwritten manuscript, for part of which there was no other copy. Fortunately, the officials eventually relented and she was allowed to take the manuscript on board, albeit tied up in elastic bands.

As she wrote to undoubtedly relieved fans on her website: "The heightened security restrictions on the airlines made the journey back from New York interesting, as I refused to be parted from the manuscript of book seven.

"A large part of it is handwritten and there was no copy of anything I had done while in the US."

She continued: "They let me take it on thankfully, bound up in elastic bands. I don’t know what I would have done if they hadn’t - sailed home probably."

The author was returning from the Big Apple where she took part in a charity book reading on August 1 with fellow writers Stephen King and John Irving.

Passengers flying from the USA continue to be subjected to stringent baggage restrictions following the discovery on August 10 of an alleged plot to blow up transatlantic flights travelling between America and the UK.

Ms Rowling also told fans of the boy wizard that she has yet to choose a name for the long-awaited conclusion to Harry’s adventures.

"I was quite happy with one of them until the other one struck me while I was taking a shower in New York," she wrote.

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