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
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.
Some writers - most, I suspect - write in isolation. I think I'd always found that quite difficult.
One of the great failings of our education system is that we tend to focus on those who are succeeding in exams, and there are plenty of them. But what we should also be looking at, and a lot more urgently, is those who fail.
Admitting failure is quite cleansing, but never - pleasurable.
When I write I try as far as possible to forget I'm writing it at all. I tell it down onto the page, as if I'm telling it to one person only, my best friend.
By the time I sit down and face the blank page I am raring to go. I tell it as if I'm talking to my best friend or one of my grandchildren.
If it is possible to be happy in the middle of a nightmare, then Topthorn and I were happy that summer.
If I learned anything in this life, I've learned that you can't cling on.
cause when there's life there's still hope
With all editing, no matter how sensitive - and I've been very lucky here - I react sulkily at first, but then I settle down and get on with it, and a year later I have my book in my hand.
You get to about 65 or 70 and you lose friends and the world does seem to be an endlessly difficult place and tragic place, so it's more and more difficult for me to find the bright lights.
With reading, I was very lucky. I had a mother who read to me, not because she had time - she was a busy woman - but she found 10 minutes to come and sit on my bed with a book.
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.
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.