Michael Morpurgo: 'You have to truly feel the story you're telling'
Some stories are just too good to stay on the page. Michael Morpurgo’s beloved book War Horse burst from its binding a long time ago, morphing from children’s novel to a Tony and Olivier award-winning play, a radio drama and a Steven Spielberg-directed film.
Now, 17 years after its first adaptation for the stage, a new version is touring nationwide once again, with the National Theatre. Michael has always been happy to share the story.
“It wasn’t entirely mine to begin with,” he points out. “I learned much of it while I sat in that chair over there.” He gestures to the squashy armchairs flanking the fireplace at his local, the Duke of York Inn, in Iddesleigh, Devon. It’s the pub where, in the 1980s, he first talked with Wilfred Ellis, a veteran from the First World War.
“I was there, with horses,” Wilfred told him when Michael asked him about the experience. Their conversation prompted Michael to dig into the area’s history and this lesser-known aspect of the war. “One million horses were sent over from here – and they suffered the same loss rate as the men,” he says, incredulously. Michael wrote War Horse from the point of view of Joey, a Devonshire red bay wrenched from his young owner Albert, enlisted, captured and subjected to the horrors of battle. Few of us read, watch or listen to it without weeping: “Horses don’t take sides. I wanted Joey’s experience to capture the universality of suffering.”
The story begins and ends in the rural fields of Devon. “I could see this village in my mind’s eye the whole time I was writing,” Michael says, pointing out of the window. “There’s the church, the green where farmers sold their horses to the army, the cottages that belonged to a dozen young men who went off to war – though only half of them came back.”
Today, school tours and Morpurgo fans make the pilgrimage to this picturesque village where truth and fiction meet. To avoid disappointing visitors, one resident urged Michael to commission a portrait of Joey for the village hall, like the one he describes in the War Horse preface. Also like the novel, the painting sits above “a clock that has stood always at one minute past ten”.
Fifty years ago, Michael and his wife Clare gave up their teaching careers to move from Kent to this wonderfully remote corner of the county. Clare had loved visiting here as a child and the Morpurgos raised their three children in a cottage just outside Iddesleigh. Here, Michael penned most of his 150 books and struck up a friendship with neighbour Ted Hughes – the two would launch the Children’s Laureateship together in 1999.
But the couple’s main reason for moving was Nethercott House, the property they purchased as the site for their charity, Farms For City Children. The idea sprang from their belief that time spent outdoors can be more educational than time spent in a classroom. “Nature is enriching,” Michael declares. “Children from disadvantaged communities need insight into a world they’ve never seen. How can they care for something unless they know it and feel that it belongs to them?”
Since its launch, more than 100,000 children have stayed at Nethercott House or one of the charity’s other farms. From milking to mucking out to exploring the nearby woods, the experience helps them reconnect with nature and the source of the food they eat. These days, Michael also hopes that their visits are a countermeasure to social media, “which cuts down on our time to talk with others – and invites children to be cruel”.
He’s not one to complain, but Michael knows how it feels to have an isolated and unsettled childhood. His father was sent to fight in the Second World War and his mother remarried when he was two, giving the family her new husband’s name. Michael only discovered the existence of his real father, an actor, when he watched a television drama with his mother and she suddenly gasped, “Oh my god, it’s your father!” as he appeared on the screen.
As a child, he had always found comfort in the company of animals. The family owned a dog for a short time, but when Michael and his brother came home from boarding school, they discovered their pet had been given away. “It was a betrayal,” he remembers sadly. “I’m more than 80 years old and I still feel it.”
Later, watching “how quickly love, trust and affection builds” between the children and the animals at Nethercott encouraged him to cast them as the stars of his books. And it was an encounter with a boy named Billy that released him from the worry that it would be “too sentimental” to write War Horse from the horse’s point of view. “Billy’s teacher told me Billy couldn’t speak, but one night, I noticed that he’d slipped out to the stables in his pyjamas. I found him next to a stall, stroking one of the ponies… and talking! Telling the pony all sorts of things. It was astonishing.”
A Welsh corgi narrates the action in Michael’s latest novel, Cobweb, inspired by a centuries-old practice where these “gritty, brave and loyal” dogs would accompany their cattle-drover owners on the 250-mile journey to London, then – remarkably – retrace their steps home alone.
The book also touches on a familiar Morpurgo motif, with the Corgi adopting a boy who is stranded in the city after the Battle of Waterloo. “Waterloo was as horrifying as the trenches, and the treatment of the veterans was appalling,” Michael says. He is sorry to find that themes of war and suffering are still so relevant. “We know that fighting is still going on all over the world. We may not be at the heart of it, but other people are.”
Michael has a surprisingly chequered history when it comes to reading. Growing up, his historian stepfather “instilled the importance of literature, but not the love of it”. Then and now, his greatest pleasure is good storytelling. “My mum was an actress and would read to us every night with great expression. It was thrilling. I learned that the most important thing was to truly feel the story you’re telling.” But he found that formal education “surgically removed the joy and wonder” from stories. An indifferent scholar, he embarked on a brief military career at Sandhurst – “I was 17 and just wanted to carry on playing rugby” – until he met Clare, who challenged him to change course.
After graduating from university, he taught at a primary school where storytime was a mandatory part of the curriculum. When Michael cast around for a new tale that would engage his 35 young students, Clare suggested, “You’re a pretty good liar – why not make one up?” He did, regularly, and soon the school’s head teacher was asking him to put one of his stories to paper so she could send it to a publisher friend. “They asked for five more!” Michael exclaims. “When I got my first cheque for £75, I thought to myself: ‘Roald Dahl, eat your heart out.’”
Michael both writes and speaks his books into being: “I don’t know any other way to write a story than to tell it aloud. The writing is very much secondary.” This might be why he finds watching War Horse on stage such a visceral experience.
“Theatre transports you because you aren’t aware that the words were ever written.” Though underwhelmed by the 2011 movie – “Films are trickier because you’re somehow aware that so much has been faked” – he is thrilled with how the play has been re-energised with new music and lighting, a diverse cast and more nuance: “You can really see that Albert, who enlists without knowing what he’s getting into, is just a boy. And the Germans aren’t simply shouty villains.” As before, Joey is brought to life with a life-size, articulated puppet and three performers who convey every one of the horse’s feelings.
Between catching the play on tour, occasional visits to the farm, his work with reading charity BookTrust and attending book events for Cobweb, Michael doesn’t have lots of time left over for amiably chatting with neighbours and dining on cottage pie at the Duke of York Inn. Even so, he and Clare are considering adopting a dog, inspired by an evangelical corgi owner who is nudging the couple to get one of their own. “We’re very tempted,” he says, smiling. Who can say when and where inspiration for Michael’s next story will strike, but for readers hoping for a Cobweb sequel, this is extremely encouraging news.
Watch the National Theatre’s War Horse and Cobweb by Michael Morpurgo is out now.
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