Michael Morpurgo
Michael Morpurgo
Michael Morpurgo, OBE, FRSL, FKC, DL is an English book author, poet, playwright, and librettist who is known best for children's novels such as War Horse. His work is noted for its "magical storytelling", for recurring themes such as the triumph of an outsider or survival, for characters' relationships with nature, and for vivid settings such as the Cornish coast or World War I. Morpurgo became the third British Children's Laureate, from 2003 to 2005...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionChildren's Author
Date of Birth5 October 1943
CitySt Albans, England
Something I learn every time I stand in front of a bunch of children, I learn never, never to underestimate them or patronise them.
War continues to divide people, to change them forever, and I write about it both because I want people to understand the absolute futility of war, the 'pity of war' as Wilfred Owen called it.
The most important thing is to live an interesting life. Keep your eyes, ears and heart open. Talk to people and visit interesting places, and don't forget to ask questions. To be a writer you need to drink in the world around you so it's always there in your head.
The big relationships you make in your life are with those that you love and if things do go wrong then it's a source of great pain and that lasts.
It is really important that focusing on things such as spelling, punctuation, grammar and handwriting doesn't inhibit the creative flow. When I was at school there was a huge focus on copying and testing and it put me off words and stories for years.
Write because you love it and not because it is something that you think you should do. Always write about something or somebody you know about - something that you feel deeply and passionately about. Never try and force it.
To write something you have to feel it and know it, and that's not comfortable.
Strange questions are the more interesting ones. Children by and large don't try to trip you up... they want to find out how you do this funny thing that you do... if they've loved a story they love to know how it started.
I was an overly young father, is the most polite way of putting it. I think I was rather immature and all I can say is that I think I've made a much better grandfather... I don't think I was ready to be a father to be honest.
It gives me confidence to know that what I'm writing has a veracity of its own without me having to invent it. When I'm writing fiction, I must believe it to be true, or I can see no point in it.
If I'm serious, yes, I'd like to have done what Shakespeare did... to act and write. You learn so much from acting. One of our great writers, Alan Bennett, does both supremely well. When I write a story, I tend to speak it aloud as I'm writing it.
Genuinely good people are like that. The sun shines out of them. They warm you right through.
He never reckoned much to schooling and that. He said you could learn most what was worth knowing from keeping your eyes and ears peeled. Best way of learning, he always said, was doing.
There's a nobility in his eye, a regal serenity about him. Does he not personify all that men try to be and never can be?