“The image that the world had ... ten years ago of Romanian orphanages ... is not an accurate picture of the overall state of institutionalised children in Romania anymore. So by launching the group here we are trying to ... establish the progress that is possible.”

Rowling recalls with tears in her eyes how an institutionalised boy gave her paintings that had won him first prize in a talent competition yesterday. The boy said he met his birth mother last year – but that she died three months later.

In a hushed voice, she also tells of six abandoned babies she saw the day before in a maternity hospital.

“I have a baby at home and again that is something that touches you,” she said. “It’s shocking although I understand the reasons these children have been abandoned are not the simple reasons that many people in Western Europe may assume. This is a complex social issue and it will need complex social solutions.”