Following the Box-Office success of 'War Horse' Baker & Taylor Interviews award winning author Michael Morpurgo, OBE.
Michael Morpurgo, OBE, is an English author, poet, playwright and librettist, best known for his work in children's literature. He was the third Children's Laureate. Baker & Taylor were lucky to ask him a few questions:
1. As well as being a Children's writer you have also worked as a primary school teacher, what did you want to be when you were a child?
When I was growing up I wanted to be a rugby player. I loved rugby. Nowadays, if I wasn’t a writer, I would be an actor. My parents were both actors and it’s in my blood. I love being up on stage performing. One of the highlights of my career was appearing on the stage of the National Theatre in War Horse. I didn’t say much but just being there was amazing.
2. You are the patron of many charities, is there one which are particularly close to your heart?
There are many that are close to my heart, but the charity that my wife Clare and I founded in 1976, Farms for City Children would have to be number one. My wife and I moved to Devon with our children where we found an old Vctorian farm house where we could welcome children from the inner cities to come and live and work on a farm for a week. We would have school groups of 30 to 40, and with their teachers, they would effectively become farmers, milking, feeding pigs and calves and mucking out the sheds. Watching these children and the animals they were caring for and living amongst, I was inspired to write many of my stories. Now, there are two more farms in Wales and Gloucester, and well over 75,000 children have visited the farms.
3. What did you enjoy most about your time as Children's Laureate?
It had to be travelling around the country talking and meting people, telling my stories and listening to theirs. There was one very memorable tour to Scotland organised by Scottish Book Trust which was wonderful. We travelled around the remote villages of northern Scotland in a magical bus and stayed in B and Bs meeting all kinds of people. I loved that.
4. You must be very proud of your Farms for City Children charity. What inspired you to start this wonderful project and how do children get to enrol?
The original notion for Farms for City Children really came to us whilst my wife Clare and I were young teachers in Kent in a local primary school. We felt that at best only half of the children were benefitting from their education, were on the road to fulfilling their potential. But the other half were failing, and we were failing them as teachers. These were the children who came from homes where there were no books, where people didn’t talk much, where television and materialism ruled. The few hours we had with them at school were, I was sure, having very little positive effect. These children were on a road to nowhere, and most of them were beginning to know it already, beginning to resent school, beginning to give up. It may be naive but we felt that there might be another way. What all children needed most was to feel needed, and this had to happen young. They had to feel that their contribution was important, that they mattered. Self-worth was the key. Once get children to feel good about themselves and that their contribution was valued, then maybe, maybe, things could change.
That is when we decided to set up Farms for City Children with some money that my wife Clare had been left by her father A year or so later the first children came, from Chivenor Primary School in Birmingham, led by a teacher called Joy Palmer. With her and her team, with the neighbouring farmers, the Ward family, we pioneered a programme of work designed to extend children in every way possible out on the farm, physically, mentally, emotionally, intellectually. They would become the farmers, work alongside their teachers and the Ward family, and me, and Clare, so that they could be involved in every aspect of the farm, within the bounds of safety. It is hard work, real work, and they know their work is essential and important, that it matters to the animals, to the farm, that it simply matters. They matter. Schools are still coming to the farms and it’s easy for schools to find out more by contacting Farms for City Children – http://www.farmsforcitychildren.co.uk/
5. The weather has been very indifferent of late. Have you a favourite poem of yours that could lift everyones spirits?
There are some wonderful poems in Where My Wellies Take Me, a collection of poetry chosen by Clare and I and published in September by Templar Publishing. One favourite from the book which reminds me of summer is Hares at Play by John Clare. Here it is - hope you like it:
HARES AT PLAY. John Clare.
The birds are gone to bed the cows are still
And sheep lie panting on each old molehill
And underneath the willow’s grey-green bough
Like toil a-resting lies the fallow plough
The timid hares throw daylight fears away
On the lane road to dust and dance and play
Then dabble in the grain by nought deterred
To lick the dew-fall from the barley's beard
Then out they start again and round the hill
Like happy thoughts – dance – squat – and loiter still
Till milking maidens in the early morn
Jingle their yokes and start them in the corn
Through well-known beaten paths each nimbling hare
Starts quick as fear - and seeks its hidden lair.
6. Which book most inspired you as a child?
My mother used to read 'The Elephant's Child' by Rudyard Kipling to me when I was little. I loved it because she read it to me, and read it beautifully, with all the voices of all the animals. I wanted to hear it again and again, and join it the parts I knew by heart. And now I know I loved it also because it is beautifully written, supremely funny and not a little subversive. Kipling plays wonderfully with words - 'the great grey-green greasy Limpopo River all hung about with fever trees'. The first book I read for myself however was Treasure Island by RL Stevenson. I was not an avid reader at all. I liked comics and being read to, and listening to stories. This was the first real book I read for myself. Jim Hawkins was the first character I identified with totally. I lived this book as I read it.
7. As well as writing children's books you also write libretti for Opera, do you have a favourite Opera?
I am very fond of the Gentle Giant which was presented as an opera by composer Stephen McNeff and librettist Mike Kenny at the Royal Opera House. I love opera too – Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte is a particularl favourite .
8. What are you reading at the moment?
I am reading a wonderful new novel by a writer called Jane Feaver called An Inventory of Heaven. Jane lives in my village in Devon and she writes beautifully and sensitively about childhood and rural loneliness.
9. What's your favourite place in the world?
There are lots of favourite places. I love Venice – such a magical place and full of stories, and the mountains of Switzerland. But there is nothing better than the Devon lanes at this time of year in early summer and by the river in the meadows walking and talking with my wife as we like to do before supper when we are at home.
10. What's next from Michael Morpurgo?
As well as Where My Wellies Take Me in September, I’ve got a new novel out from Harper Collins called A Medal for Leroy. It’s a story of hidden family secrets which was inspired by a story from my own family discovered by Maggie Fergusson when she was researching her biography of my life. Leroy is out in early October, I think. Hope you like it.
