Michael Morpurgo

Speaker 20:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and four, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:30

Mike Osaway this week is a writer. Over the past thirty years, in more than ninety books, he's spread out for his audience of children a world which is both real and exciting, and one where he hopes they'll learn to love literature. He's won innumerable prizes for his work, but that's not what drives him these days, as much as the belief that our educational system is inadequate when it comes to words and stories. His style is eloquent and simple, and his themes relationships between young and old, children and animals, loneliness, prejudice, expertly engage the interest of young readers. I've grown up, he says, from just a pure storyteller to a storyteller writer, and that's where I think I am now. He is the children's laureate, Michael Morpergo. How do you define the difference then, Michael, between the two, the storyteller and the storyteller writer? It's a question of style?

Michael Morpurgo1:21

Style and I think I began orally. I mean I began telling.

Michael Morpurgo1:25

Children in my class when I was teaching would tell them stories. And telling is different from writing. I didn't know it at the time. I thought you could just write down the words. But the one thing leads to the other, and the more practised you become at it, you find your voice as a writer rather than your voice as a storyteller. But they're linked.

Presenter1:41

But don't you I mean you use more words as a storyteller when you're doing it orally, don't you? So are you saying now you you hone your prose?

Michael Morpurgo1:44

Doing it orally, don't you?

Michael Morpurgo1:48

I want to I want to become a poet when I grow up, really. I really want the thing to become as honed as it can possibly be. And my stories are getting shorter all the time. I use up much less paper.

Presenter1:59

So you're finding what the right words, so you don't have to use so many, is that simply that?

Michael Morpurgo2:01

So you don't have to use so many, is it? I think so.

Presenter2:04

And do you read out loud when you finally honed it right back?

Michael Morpurgo2:07

I read it out loud to myself, first of all, and then I'm very lucky because I have built in children in my life, either grandchildren, or my own children, or these children who come to the farm.

Michael Morpurgo2:18

And I read stories to them.

Presenter2:19

This is a farm you run where you have school children here, which will be a little bit more.

Michael Morpurgo2:21

Farms for city children, yes. And I go up there usually once a week and they we sit around the fireside and I

Michael Morpurgo2:28

will read them a chapter from my latest book and you can tell from the sort of shuffling whether it's working or not, whether I've ever done it here or there. It's a wonderful thing. I I exploit them mercilessly.

Presenter2:37

But you can tell what from their body language or whether they're stock still and riveted.

Michael Morpurgo2:40

The name stock.

Michael Morpurgo2:41

It's to do, I think, with that focus that they've got in their eyes. You know, when they're completely there and it's a wonderful feeling, when you've done it right, there's this complete concentration, utter involvement, they're lost in it completely.

Presenter2:52

But I wonder how much it's got to do with the prose, and whether the narrative, as far as children are concerned, isn't much more important. I mean, not to put too fine a point on it, there's some extremely popular children's books which aren't necessarily very well written.

Michael Morpurgo3:04

That's true. It's true of adult books too, isn't it? I sort of feel that the poetry in the prose is very important and children respond to that. I responded to it. It's the first thing I ever recognised in story was the music in the words, the way the story flowed. And this business, if we can, of making a a story sound right, feel right, with rhythm and pace, seems to me to be something that's elemental to a child's enjoyment of it. And of course the lovely thing with books is it's the most interactive.

Michael Morpurgo3:34

Of all the arts, without the reader. What is it? It's a bit of paper with some code on it. And the child does the rest.

Presenter3:39

The child does the rest. But when did you first, professionally, if you like, experience that, rather than just reading to your own children, when did you first sit in front of a body of children and think, Yes, got them?

Michael Morpurgo3:51

It was when I was a teacher. I'd finished telling stories and had written one down and read it out aloud. I suddenly realized I could do it. It's a wonderful feeling and it's not dissimilar, I have to say, from

Michael Morpurgo4:00

Telling lies. When I was a little boy and I'd tell a lie and I saw it work.

Michael Morpurgo4:05

And I really love that. Once I've done it once, then I want to do it again and again and again. It's become like a bad habit now.

Presenter4:11

Or a good one. Or a good one. Tell me about your first record.

Michael Morpurgo4:12

Or a little bit.

Michael Morpurgo4:15

The first record is um the Pastoral Symphony, Beethoven's number six, The Shepherd's Song. I was introduced to Beethoven very early on by

Michael Morpurgo4:24

Picture on the outside of a seventy eight.

Michael Morpurgo4:27

Record of Beethoven.

Michael Morpurgo4:30

Half lying.

Michael Morpurgo4:31

hands behind his back, striding across a field.

Michael Morpurgo4:35

And I always loved that image of Beethoven.

Michael Morpurgo4:38

But primarily I've chosen it because I love story in music. I love to be able to feel that I'm.

Michael Morpurgo4:45

in some kind of movement, whether it is a movement of narrative, but it has to move along for me, and I have to be able to follow it. And here I am I'm Beethoven, I'm striding across the hills, there's a storm coming, or the storm's just gone. I think it's wonderful.

Presenter5:58

The Shepherd's Song, part of the fifth movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. Six, the Pastoral, played by the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Erich Leinsdorf. What were the books that engaged you as a child, then, Michael Morpergo, that you sort of happily and voluntarily picked up got engaged by?

Michael Morpurgo6:14

The first was my mother engaging me. She engaged me with the just-so stories and poetry. She was an actor.

Michael Morpurgo6:22

and uh had a wonderful reading voice. And it was she, I think, who made me feel that there was music in words.

Presenter6:30

She talked about it since, hasn't she? I think she actually said, I remember him enjoying words as well.

Michael Morpurgo6:32

Hmm.

Michael Morpurgo6:34

Absolutely.

Michael Morpurgo6:37

She told me this story, which um I don't know if it's apocryphal or not, but who cares? It was her mother telling her, um that when I was extremely small I used to sit in bed and say the word Zanzibar, rocking back and forth, Zanzibar, Zanzibar, Zanzibar and one day she was walking past the room and I was going, Zanzibar, Mazipan, Zanzibar, Mazipan and she said, I did love playing with words, it was true, whether that's true or not. It's a great story, so who cares?

Presenter7:03

But there's another story that you were given Oliver Twist by your stepfather and didn't like it at all.

Michael Morpurgo7:09

I was he was he was the kind of man who wanted me to be, I think, as bright as he was. He was a he was an intellectual, he was an academic, and he wanted me to be deep into the classics very quickly. The truth was that at the time I loved reading comics, and I loved reading any Blyton, and you would have to do those things in secret because they really weren't allowed or approved of.

Presenter7:27

Where did you do them?

Michael Morpurgo7:29

In bed.

Michael Morpurgo7:30

With a torchlight, as you do, because I was wait boarding school quite a lot and it wasn't allowed there either. What Enie Blightened? Enie Blyton was banned. At the school. But nonetheless, we all did it because it was bad mostly. And anyway, they were great page turners. They really weren't fighting.

Presenter7:41

It's the famous five under the cover.

Michael Morpurgo7:42

Before I go to Smuggler's Top and all that sort of thing, I remember it and it was wonderful because you really want and I would read them and read them and read them. The first book I read though that my stepfather approved of, which was quite important to me, was Robert Louis Stevenson, was Treasure Island. When I said I'd read that, I I think he thought, yes, okay, he's he's on the right track.

Presenter7:58

And you liked it too, so you met in in in Robert Louis Stevenson, you had?

Michael Morpurgo8:01

Absolutely. I liked it'cause it was terrifically exciting. It was blood and guts and pirates and not a girl to be seen anywhere. Good narrative. Very good narrative. Um and he, I think, quite rightly was thinking, Well, this is a very fine piece of writing. Well, I didn't know that until of course much later.

Presenter8:07

Good narrative.

Presenter8:14

Uh

Presenter8:15

But apparently at a prep school you've said suddenly your love of reading or of literature was just wiped out. Was wiped out.

Michael Morpurgo8:22

Yes. Um right the way through really. But it started from my prep school. Where was the teacher getting you to stand up?

Presenter8:24

A good start at the moment.

Michael Morpurgo8:28

and recite poems which you're supposed to have learned the night before, and they did a lot of the teaching in those days with fear.

Michael Morpurgo8:35

And it

Michael Morpurgo8:36

It was something I couldn't cope with, so I'd stand up and I'd recite The Listeners by Walter de Leva or something like that, and I'd get two lines in.

Michael Morpurgo8:44

And the stutter would come, and the fear would take hold, and it would be detention, and so the whole thing was overlaid really with this threat.

Michael Morpurgo8:52

So in the end, I just, you know, I managed to scrape by with forty-nine per cent or fifty-one per cent, because I didn't particularly want to be caned.

Presenter8:58

But you felt no pleasure. Oh, none whatsoever.

Michael Morpurgo8:59

Oh, none whatsoever. It all became simply an exercise you did at school.

Presenter9:02

And you didn't like the teachers and you didn't like the food and you were very homes. I mean, you were the classic prep school boy, well, I was.

Michael Morpurgo9:06

Murder clapped

Michael Morpurgo9:08

I was. I was. I learnt to survive, however. I was good at sport, and I so I became really a rugby and a cricket person, which was great. I didn't have too much thinking, and I could succeed. And if you succeeded on their terms, then you kept out of trouble.

Presenter9:22

There's a little boy in your book, The Butterfly Lion, who runs away from prep school and has a little adventure. Did you run away?

Michael Morpurgo9:26

Yeah

Michael Morpurgo9:28

Yes.

Michael Morpurgo9:29

I did. I I I ran away from school very briefly. It was my one and only great escape.

Michael Morpurgo9:35

And I didn't get very far. I got as far as, I suppose, a couple of miles down the road, and I got picked up by a little old lady who looked after me and didn't report to me. She gave me buns, and she gave me tea, and she calmed me down, and she took me back and dropped me off not at the top of the school drive, but by some bushes, and I could run in. And they never knew I I'd try to run away. So I got away with it, all because this lady I have no idea who she was, but she saved my life.

Presenter10:00

But she didn't tell you a story about a butterfly lion.

Michael Morpurgo10:02

No, I made that up myself.

Presenter10:05

Lexic number two.

Michael Morpurgo10:07

This is Mozart's Exultata Uberdi. My mother was a huge influence early on in my life, both with reading and with music, and Mozart was a great favorite of her family. And um I particularly like this Exultata Uberdati.

Speaker 410:24

Her daughter

Speaker 410:36

Oh's honey baby.

Speaker 410:40

Oh, God's only.

Speaker 410:53

Oh dear.

Speaker 410:57

Good people come to be this one this one day.

Speaker 411:11

Take it off.

Speaker 411:12

So the dream for who be

Presenter11:17

Margaret Marshall and the Radio Symphony Orchestra of Stuttgart, conducted by Sir Neville Mariner, with part of Mozart's Exultate Ubilate. Now, this development of Moor Pergot, the writer, and he's still a couple of decades on from where we've been talking about, a small boy, took you a long time. The development of him was taking place against a very unusual family background, wasn't it? Your father had disappeared from your life when you were really quite small. How did that happen?

Michael Morpurgo11:41

Um well, it was because of the war, really. It was my father was away at war in Baghdad, and my mother met another man, Jack Morpurgo, and they fell in love. And so when my father, Tony Bridge, came back from the war, basically his place had been taken at the hearth. And uh

Michael Morpurgo12:01

He just decided, and I think it's a rather noble decision really, that because he had never known my brother Peter and myself.

Michael Morpurgo12:07

That he wouldn't be part of our lives. He didn't want to interfere because there wasn't a relationship effectively. He'd always been away. We were well looked after. Jack was firm, strict, but did his duty by us and stuff like that. Jack's stepfather. Jack's stepfather.

Presenter12:19

Jack's stepfather. Jack the stepfather. But extraordinary. This is what, immediately post-war.

Michael Morpurgo12:24

You made it first.

Presenter12:24

Well what can the the family, what can friends have thought about it? It would have been

Michael Morpurgo12:28

Divorce was terrible then, as you know. It was one of those things that you deep shame about. And so I what happened in the family is there was a sort of a cover-up. There were four children.

Presenter12:29

Unless you

Michael Morpurgo12:36

to Step and Peter and myself. And uh th the impression created was that this was one happy family. And I can see why, but nonetheless what happened was there was this sort of a fib going on the whole time. Peter and myself of course knew about it. Did you talk about it? Did you? Yeah, we did, but we didn't have much evidence on which to base our conversations because there were no pictures of my father around. My mother wouldn't talk about my father. That was something she really hated to do. She would say, No, this is your life now. This is my life now. We don't want to talk about that sort of stuff.

Speaker 412:48

Right.

Presenter13:03

Awful pressure, though, you would feel I'm a very unreal situation if everybody is colluding in a in a lie.

Michael Morpurgo13:08

It it wa it was, thinking back, really odd. And at the time I suppose you do when you're young, you just accept it. You know, it was just rather strange. We knew there was this phantom father somewhere. We didn't really know where.

Presenter13:19

'Cause he was written out really. He was erased.

Michael Morpurgo13:21

He was erased completely from the whole story until one evening we were gathered around the television Christmas Eve and I was nineteen and it was a time when there was black and white television only. We were watching the BBC serial and it was great expectations. And uh we're all sitting there and there was this moment at the beginning of a pip coming through the graveyard and the wind whistling around the gravestones. And up from behind this gravestone reared this terrible figure.

Michael Morpurgo13:49

And my mother grasped me by the arm and said, Oh, my God, Michael, that's your father

Michael Morpurgo13:55

And of course it was my father, Tony, playing Magwitch. But the first time I ever saw my father he was a convict in great expectations. So I just sort of stared at this man and thought my

Michael Morpurgo14:04

My God, is that my father? I hope it's not my father.

Presenter14:08

You hoped it wasn't you.

Michael Morpurgo14:08

Well, because he looked so pretty horrible, you know, as Magwich. I'd love to have seen him without makeup.

Presenter14:12

But you were nineteen years old.

Michael Morpurgo14:14

Nineteen, complete yes. It was traumatic really. Um I do seem to remember one or two of my step um aunts and people walked out at that particular moment because there was a kind of the whole secret was undone in that one moment.

Speaker 414:25

Who's on

Michael Morpurgo14:27

Um and from then on I think the interest

Michael Morpurgo14:30

grew and then awareness grew and eventually my father did come over and see us when we were in our mid-twenties for the first time. We've had one of those awful tea parties where you kind of hear the teaspoons on the china um and little words were said. But it was beginning. And he's actually the only one of my all my parents now still alive and living in Canada.

Presenter14:50

So he through your children perhaps he he reclaimed his grandfatherhood?

Michael Morpurgo14:53

Fatherhood. Very much so. He came back and uh from time to time, every time he came over, he would visit and got to know my children and indeed my grandchildren. And he went on acting, wonderful actor, I've seen him, utterly brilliant.

Presenter15:07

Record number three.

Michael Morpurgo15:09

This is um I suspect I heard this when I was about 19. It's Buddy Holly and words of love.

Speaker 415:17

Darling, with near dear.

Speaker 415:25

Words of love you.

Speaker 415:28

Waste yourself dangerous.

Speaker 415:32

Darling, I love you.

Presenter15:46

Buddy Holly and the Crickets and Words of Love, and that was recorded in 1957. It's a re it's a obviously an incredibly dramatic story, the one you've just told, and a very sad story, too.

Michael Morpurgo15:55

Yeah.

Presenter15:56

Um but very instructive, I suppose, in what motivates people looking back, you know, who said what and how hush-hush it was and how people reacted. But you haven't done any kind of

Presenter16:07

Bit of realism about living that kind of step-son life.

Michael Morpurgo16:11

No, I haven't.

Presenter16:12

Not getting on with wicked stepfathers or something. I don't know if your father was wicked or didn't get on with him.

Michael Morpurgo16:16

What does come into he wasn't wicked, I think what he was was distant. And certainly the fathers in my stories do tend to be distant. Um and being alone is something that happens often in my stories. I did feel quite alone, um uh as a lot of people do, actually it's rather common. But I did feel

Speaker 216:29

Yeah.

Michael Morpurgo16:34

detached from my stepfather. I knew he was caring that I should do well, but there wasn't an intimacy there, really. And uh to a degree my mother in a way separated from us a little bit as well in order, I think, to make the second marriage work.

Presenter16:50

What you have used on on several occasions is the subject of war, although it's been the First World War, but your boyhood would have been permeated rather with talk of the Second World War.

Michael Morpurgo17:00

Talk and with sights of it too. I mean, I was brought up in London and played in the ruins, best sort of playground you can think of for a child. But what struck me very early on, maybe five or six or seven, was that there was a great sadness in the house. And there was a photograph I remember of my

Michael Morpurgo17:18

My uncle Peter, who was shot down in 1941, and I never met him. He was an actor also, and looked like Rupert Brooke, he was a very, very handsome man. And he was in his RAF uniform with his side cap on, and he was looking out of this photograph at me as I was growing up. And it had a huge impression on me, because he was a great hero in many ways, not a decorated hero, but he died very bravely.

Michael Morpurgo17:42

To me, he was someone I looked up to enormously as I grew up.

Michael Morpurgo17:47

The word sacrifice was often said by my mother and my stepfather. And I suppose from then on, although I.

Michael Morpurgo17:55

I don't know war first hand, what I do know is the suffering of the survivors, how they had to deal with loss.

Michael Morpurgo18:01

And I've

Michael Morpurgo18:02

I tried to examine that quite a lot.

Presenter18:05

Record number four.

Michael Morpurgo18:07

It's really Claire's choice, my wife's choice. She had she wanted to choose all eight, but I wouldn't let her. Um but I had to let this one in, and in fact I wanted to, because it's very much uh her favourite piece of music in the world. It's Mozart's Clarinet Concerto, and I will always associate it uh with her, which would be rather nice on the island.

Presenter18:12

Yeah.

Presenter19:26

The opening of the second movement of Mozart's Clarinet Concerto, played by Andrew Mariner, with the London Mozart Players, conducted by Jane Glover. So i you got through your boyhood, Michael, it sounds, um, by by being very well behaved, really. I mean doing doing what you felt you ought to, which would be not frowned upon by yourself.

Michael Morpurgo19:44

Not frowned upon by yourself. I mean, I was sort of captain at school and uh and and sort of good at the things you could be to get by, but I never tested myself intellectually, put it that way.

Presenter19:55

And you went to Sandhurst because it was thought you should be a soldier.

Michael Morpurgo19:59

I think I was thought to be too stupid to be much else, really. And I was very good at.

Presenter20:02

Elsewhere.

Michael Morpurgo20:04

I think I was very good at the leadership thing. And I looked good in a uniform when I strutted around. I was horribly arrogant, so it was all right.

Presenter20:06

And I look.

Presenter20:09

But then you met Claire, to whom you've now been married for more than what forty years, I think. Um I mean, it seems m to me she was the great catalyst in your life, wasn't wasn't she? I mean, she y you turned your life on its head having met her.

Michael Morpurgo20:21

Yes, um yes, I should have been a major general by now, or field marshal. I was untimely ripped from the military.

Presenter20:27

Interest

Michael Morpurgo20:28

Um no, it was uh one of those uh wonderfully life-changing things. It was marvellous because I think what she did was to open my eyes to other possibilities and particularly to other possibilities about myself. And up to that time I hadn't done much thinking, I'd thought in very straight lines. And um I think we both decided this was not the place we wanted to be. I left after I went to university. And I went to university, I went to King's College London.

Presenter20:48

You were going to university.

Presenter20:52

And did you rediscover your love of literature then?

Michael Morpurgo20:54

No, no, I was still I still had the same problem as I had when I was studying English at school, which was it was essays, get the marks, and not actually read the books and just read the books because you love them, until I read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. And I read that in my last year, unfortunately, and immediately I read it I fell in love again with reading.

Presenter21:03

Hmm.

Michael Morpurgo21:16

and I heard again music in words for the first time after many, many years.

Presenter21:19

Yeah.

Presenter21:20

But you're under great pressures by then because you were you did le lead your life in a sort of funny sort of order, really, because you got married quite young, had children quite young when you were at university, so great pressures on you, and you both became teachers.

Michael Morpurgo21:29

Doing it in group

Michael Morpurgo21:32

Both became

Michael Morpurgo21:33

We both became teachers, yes. And I taught for about eight years at the Coalface. I really did love it, but it was exhausting. Anyway.

Presenter21:40

And you were nervous at it, weren't you?

Michael Morpurgo21:42

Yep, but full of energy. I was quite a good teacher in the sense that

Michael Morpurgo21:45

I I put a lot of myself into it, a huge amount of I was very committed to it, to making these children to opening their eyes, and particularly because I had read a book called Poetry in the Making.

Michael Morpurgo21:56

By Ted Hughes.

Michael Morpurgo21:58

which is a kind of an invitation to write.

Michael Morpurgo22:02

And this was this great poet saying, Here you can do it, you just look around you.

Michael Morpurgo22:05

You feel what's around you, and you note it down, and then you write what you see, and you write what you feel.

Michael Morpurgo22:11

And they came alive. I had this wonderful, fresh writing. And because they were doing it, I started doing it. And my whole fascination with words again grew and grew. Confidence grew. I started telling stories. And that's really how as as a teacher I grew into a writer as well.

Presenter22:26

He's certainly a mass gaming.

Michael Morpurgo22:28

He certainly had a massive amount to do with it, yeah.

Presenter22:31

And there's m more of him to come, but let's pause for record number five.

Michael Morpurgo22:35

Here comes the sun, the Beatles. I sort of did all my adult growing up with the Beatles. They they remind me of my family, really of my children, Sebastian and Horatio and Rosalind, and uh the good times we had together. There were always Beatles records playing in the house when they were growing up, and this is um my favorite.

Speaker 422:54

Here comes the sun to do.

Speaker 422:57

Here comes the song and I say it's alright.

Speaker 423:07

Little darling, it's been a long, long, lonely way.

Speaker 423:14

Little darling

Speaker 423:16

It feels like years since it's been here

Speaker 423:21

Uh

Presenter23:21

The next very large decision in the lives of Mr. and Mrs. Morpurgo, school teachers, parents of three children, was uh in 1976. You'd have been in your early thirties, I think, when you decided both of you to stop teaching and to buy a farm and move to Devon, live in this farm and invite lots of school children to come and visit you. That was a very brave decision.

Michael Morpurgo23:44

Very brave, um, and it's a very hopeful decision. It's rather like getting married when you're nineteen. I mean, you get lucky. And we got lucky, very lucky.

Michael Morpurgo23:52

We knew what we wanted to do. We wanted somehow to.

Michael Morpurgo23:55

Enrich the lives.

Michael Morpurgo23:57

Of City Children.

Michael Morpurgo23:59

But what happened is that I as a teacher and she as a teacher, we both found that half of the children in your class were simply missing out, and that education wasn't touching them. And we did our research, we went to university departments of education and said, look, what's going wrong? How can you change things for children, really change things? And what came back was what we knew already in our gut, which was that children have to be deeply engaged.

Michael Morpurgo24:22

In something unusual it's a form of work.

Michael Morpurgo24:25

which involves responsibility and the building up of self-worth. And the whole idea of a farm came from that, that we would they would come, they would be farm workers, they would work extremely hard, and yes, they would find out about the countryside, where their food came from, conservation, ecology, all those things, but more important, they'd find they had a place in the world. This was their world. It was a very beautiful world.

Presenter24:48

And how much have you used them then observing children, seeing their relationships or seeing their relationships again? I mentioned you one of your themes is very much young and old forming a relationship. Have you used have you observed and taken from

Michael Morpurgo25:01

All the time, all the time, I've exploited them mercilessly when you think about it. No, I've been in this wonderfully privileged position, which is to work alongside these children for twenty-five years. I mean, I can give you an instance. There was a child who came with a terrible stutter, and I was told not to point my finger at him and ask him a direct question, or he'd run back to Birmingham. So I didn't. And I came into the yard one evening, it was a dark November night, and this young lad was standing on the doorstep.

Presenter25:04

Pink

Michael Morpurgo25:25

talking to the horse, which is head leaning out of the the stable.

Michael Morpurgo25:29

Talking nineteen to the dozen, nineteen to the dozen, not a stutter, no sign of a stutter. So I went and got the teachers, and we just stood there in the in the darkness and watched him. And he was telling the story of his day to a horse. And it's that kind of observation which you can't get elsewhere.

Presenter25:45

Which you used, of course, in war horse. And this is a a farm horse that ends up going to war and becomes a cavalry charger.

Michael Morpurgo25:49

Yeah.

Michael Morpurgo25:51

I found out that there were a couple of people living in our village. They were old soldiers of the First World War who'd been with the Devon Yeomanry and who told me of their experiences with horses. And I found out that roughly two million horses had been killed. That's just on our side. And it's the story of the First World War seen through the eyes of a farm horse. One of the men I talked to said that he would talk to the horse and he would say things to the horse that he couldn't possibly say to his friends about his mum and about his sweetheart and stuff like that.

Presenter26:21

Or about being frightened.

Michael Morpurgo26:22

About being frightened, yes. I thought it was a wonderful way to tell the story of this war.

Presenter26:27

Go number six.

Michael Morpurgo26:30

Burning mills at Messines.

Michael Morpurgo26:32

which is very much the First World War. I love the pipes, and I wouldn't want to be on my island without the sound of pipes, and I'm not Scottish at all, though I wear truse, because I would like to be Scottish.

Presenter27:06

Coop Boys and Simpson and Burning Mills at Messines. The um the other important source of of inspiration and and and help that you found over the years in in Devon was another local, but a rather different one from the ones you've mentioned, someone you met one day on a riverbank, Ted Hughes. How did it happen? How did that friendship begin?

Michael Morpurgo27:26

Well, he he used to fish our stretch of the river Torridge, and I was just walking down there one one dusk late dusk and uh he sort of loomed up.

Michael Morpurgo27:37

Darkly, from the river, gripped me by the hand and said hello, and went on with his fishing. He never liked to be interrupted in his fishing at all.

Michael Morpurgo27:45

And anyway, we became very firm friends. I did my little bit of writing, and he was he was wonderful about that. He he would read what I'd written. He would never say much, but one thing I remember he said about Warhorse when it failed to win the Whitbread Prize, and it was shortlisted and failed to and he took me out for a day to console me, bless him, and uh said that it was a fine book, he said, but he'll write a finer one.

Michael Morpurgo28:12

There's nothing you can say better than that to a sort of young writer who's feeling he hasn't quite got it.

Presenter28:17

So did you always take your books to him before you sent them to be published?

Michael Morpurgo28:20

No, not always. But very often I would give them to him when they just had been published. And he he would give me manuscripts sometime that he was um thinking of yes, he w and I've I've got some at at home, still annotated type scripts.

Presenter28:29

I feel like it's a very good thing.

Speaker 428:29

Uh

Presenter28:34

But he'd written children.

Michael Morpurgo28:35

Children's books and

Presenter28:35

As well. And that was, I think, I mean, you two cooked up the idea of the children's laureate.

Michael Morpurgo28:35

Well and that was I think

Michael Morpurgo28:39

One evening, um, sitting round bemoaning the fact we were both bemoaning the fact, but he was bemoaning that his work wasn't considered

Michael Morpurgo28:48

whole, that people divided him up into this adult writer and this children's writer, and that people considered it of lesser importance, and he thought this was absurd, and I said, Well, it is absurd, but then people are like that about children's writing, and he said, Well, we should do something about it He was very proactive to hear about these sort of things.

Michael Morpurgo29:05

So I said, Well, come on, your poet laureate, why can't we have a children's laureate?

Michael Morpurgo29:08

And it was a little throwaway line. I mean, it really was a throwaway line.

Michael Morpurgo29:12

And uh

Michael Morpurgo29:13

He came back amissably, I suppose.

Michael Morpurgo29:15

Why don't we do it? He made it happen. He made it happen.

Presenter29:18

Quentin Blake was the first, as you say, then Anne Fine, and now you. It's come to you. But you feel it's come to you for a purpose, don't you? You feel very strongly about it.

Michael Morpurgo29:23

You feel as

Michael Morpurgo29:27

My feeling is that I want to

Michael Morpurgo29:29

I'll try if I can to bring the literature back into literacy, because what I feel has happened is that we're getting into this.

Michael Morpurgo29:36

It's a kind of we're going back many, many years where literacy has become narrower and narrower and narrower because it's target-led.

Michael Morpurgo29:44

And so when people read stories in school, very often they read them because people want to ask questions about it, rather than simply to listen to the story and love the story first.

Presenter29:54

Which is what you said essentially knocked it out of you at prep school suddenly because you've got to perform, you've got to score marks.

Michael Morpurgo29:54

Which is

Michael Morpurgo29:58

Yeah.

Michael Morpurgo30:00

I'm a prime example of what happens when you do that, so I do know a bit about it subjectively. And so what I'm trying to do is to get out there and simply tell stories as far and wide as I can. Let's have teachers loving their reading, parents loving their reading, and so that they can pass that love on to the children. Rather than that read that, it's good for you, which is what happened to me.

Presenter30:23

Click on number seven.

Michael Morpurgo30:24

This sum is Thomas Tallus's Sperminalium.

Michael Morpurgo30:28

which I think I first heard at Ted Hughes's memorial service in Westminster Abbey, and when it died away at the end it was one of the one of the great moments of my life.

Speaker 430:39

Let's be sure.

Presenter31:36

Part of Thomas Talis' Spem in Allium, sung by the Talis scholars, directed by Peter Phillips, and Memories for You, Michael Morburgo, of Ted Hughes. By the way, what did your stepfather, the great man of letters, think of your becoming a writer? Did he approve? Um, I think he approved

Michael Morpurgo31:52

When I started writing quite well, to start with he I think he thought I was.

Michael Morpurgo31:57

It was a little hobby.

Presenter31:58

But your mother would have understood.

Michael Morpurgo31:59

My mother would have understood. I think she did understand actually.

Presenter32:02

Your mother was a romantic and I guess you're quite a romantic one.

Michael Morpurgo32:05

Yes, like me.

Presenter32:08

Okay, well now your fictional namesake, Michael, who washed up on a Pacific island in Kensky's kingdom.

Presenter32:17

Had a terrible time, terrible struggle. He couldn't find food, he couldn't find water, he got very frightened, and he had his dog with him. And you're not allowed a dog on this island. How are you going to get on?

Michael Morpurgo32:25

Well, if the world got really much worse than it is.

Michael Morpurgo32:29

Your island might be this paradise, and if I didn't have a wife to go back to and children and grandchildren.

Michael Morpurgo32:36

Yeah, I could I could live with orangutans. That'd be fine.

Presenter32:39

Last record.

Michael Morpurgo32:40

It's really bringing us right up to date. I watched a marvellous film not long ago called Dancing at Lunasa, which is really all about

Michael Morpurgo32:47

Sisters in a remote Irish cottage, and they're on hard times.

Michael Morpurgo32:52

The radio is so important, they can't get the darn thing to work very often.

Michael Morpurgo32:56

And there is just this wonderful moment where it crackles into life.

Michael Morpurgo32:59

And they all go outside, and it's this huge exaltation of dance. And I want to remember that, because I want to go out and dance on the sand like that, and feel exhilarated by music.

Presenter33:38

Dancing at Lunasa by Bill Whelan from the soundtrack of the film. Now, Michael, if you could only take one of those eight records, which one would you take?

Michael Morpurgo33:45

It would be um sperminalium. Um I think what I would miss on the island most is the sound of the human voice.

Michael Morpurgo33:53

And this is just a sublime orchestra of forty human voices and just I think is the most wonderful piece of music.

Presenter34:01

What about your book? We give you, as you know, the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare.

Michael Morpurgo34:04

I want

Michael Morpurgo34:06

A book called The Rattle Bag, which is an anthology of poetry edited by Shamassini and Ted Hughes. And I think it's about three or four hundred poems, and I would learn them.

Michael Morpurgo34:15

whilst I was on the island, so that I could recite them, and I think it would stop me going mad.

Presenter34:21

And your luxury.

Michael Morpurgo34:22

I have six wonderful grandchildren. And the second one, Eloise, I put this question to her, and she said.

Michael Morpurgo34:29

Really what you should have is a water slide.

Michael Morpurgo34:33

So when I do my dancing along the beach, my Irish dancing, I'm then going to climb up on the water side and whiz down into the water.

Presenter34:40

Yeah.

Michael Morpurgo34:40

I'll have my happy days.

Presenter34:42

Michael Morpergo, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island is.

Michael Morpurgo34:45

Thank you, sir, it's been such fun.

Speaker 234:54

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.