He started off on paper as the boy who lived under the stairs at 4 Privet Drive before being unexpectedly swept into the magical wizarding world.

JK Rowling's successful series has captured the imagination of millions over the last 19 years through the fantasy worlds of Hogwarts, Diagon Alley and the Ministry of Magic.

From paperback and gaming success to blockbuster films and a theme park, a Scots academic believes the "Harry Potter generation" who grew up eagerly awaiting the latest release of the book or film has paved the way for a recent surge in popularity of big budget historical fictions like Outlander and Game of Thrones.

Glasgow University senior lecturer Dr Robert Maslen runs the UK's only fantasy literature course, which has attracted post-graduates from around the world.

He says the popularity of a new course, which has enjoyed a tripling in the number of applicants since launching last year, reflects the current generation's fascination with the fantasy realm.

"What fantasy offers is a halfway house," he says.

"Something which is either in the deep past and reached by some fantastic or impossible means or set in an alternative world that doesn't exist but, at the same time, brings with it a number of the concerns and urgent issues that are present in our own world.

"This enables us to confront and investigate them quite intensively without necessarily bringing some of the issues which narratives set in our own world would bring.

"There is a new generation growing up who read Harry Potter when they were kids. And Harry Potter was a really good example of a text which then migrated into other forms."

For Dr Maslen, it's the creation of worlds where elements of the impossible exist that has connected fans of Harry Potter to more recent historical fantasies such as Outlander and Game of Thrones.

"What is interesting is that people now like the idea of a fantasy set in a period where there is an element of something impossible," he says.

"Outlander is partly modelled on a romance epic and the idea of relationships but it also combines this with history. The element of the impossible in this is time travel.

"It is being presented to us through the eyes of someone who had no idea she was suddenly going to be transplanted to this place and didn't really have much prior knowledge to.

"This corresponds to the situation of many readers now who don't know much about 1745 so that's one of the things that make it attractive."

Similarly with Game of Thrones, Dr Maslen says the world created by author George R. R. Martin has appealed to many because of the historical elements intertwined within the narrative.

He adds: "In Game of Thrones, there is the very realistic representation of inter-factional fighting that goes on in a monarchy.

"That's the problem with historical novels: you do know the end of the story.

"You know that Thomas More is going to be beheaded whereas with Martin, you have absolutely no idea that the head of the Stark family is going to roll at the end of the first series."

As well as the Harry Potter series, Maslen says authors such as Terry Pratchett and his Discworld books and J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings have helped boost an interest in history, with people flocking to castles such as Doune Castle and Outlander tours to places such as Culross and Culloden Battlefield proving to be a hit.

"I think the people who get interested in fantasy tend to want to go on exploring that interest and exploring it in new forms." he says.

"In a TV show, you have to choose a location of where you are going to set something like Game of Thrones so you have to choose what kind of castle will do in a particular place in the story.

"In doing that, you provide a new aspect of the world which wasn't present in the novel.

"The locations become available for people who loved the books to go and visit and imagine and therefore find a physical and geographical connection with the things they have read, which is a real pleasure."

With a second series of Outlander under way and the sixth series of Game of Thrones set to launch on April 25, Dr Maslen says the complex worlds created in these books make for the perfect discussion topic for avid fans.

"The books have more paths in them so this makes the discussions interesting," he says.

"It was the same with the Harry Potter sequence, which bits do you leave out? There were parts that were left out that readers were deeply upset about.

"With Game of Thrones you have the additional delight that the TV series is rapidly outstripping the novels so you have the questions - will the TV series end up following the trajectory of the novels?

"Will it end up departing from them completely? How far will it depart from them? And will Jon Snow be resurrected? These are the major questions that will crop up."

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