Potter elbows 'macho' Prescott

French children queued from midnight to buy the new book

French bookshops are bracing themselves as the publication of the fourth Harry Potter book looks set to fuel the nation's passion for the young wizard.

The nation is so excited by the arrival of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire that it was trailed on the front page of several newspapers.

Meanwhile the row between UK Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott and French environment minister Dominique Voynet, in which she called him "macho" - not interesting to the French press - was relegated to the inside pages.

Some 450,000 "special edition" hardbacks of JK Rowling's new novel have been printed and went on sale at midnight on Tuesday.

Dominique Voynet called John Prescott a "macho" man after the collapse of global warming talks

About 40 shops around the country opened late into the night and French publishers Gallimard held themed evenings to mark the launch.

"The Harry Potter phenomenon is huge in France," said a spokeswoman.

"The first three books in the series have outsold books by such authors as Mary Higgins Clark, Stephen King or Tom Clancy.

"The surprising part is that the books were initially intended for children but they've also been a hit with parents who started stealing the books from their kids."

A French radio station broadcast a reading of the first Harry Potter book, The Sorcerer's Stone, between 1030pm local time (2130 GMT) and 7am (0600 GMT).

More than 1.4m copies of the first three books have been sold since 1998.

Over 300,000 Harry Potter books have been sold in France in the last month alone.

The Harry Potter series has been translated into 31 languages and 35 million copies of the first three books have been sold worldwide.