The life of michael morpurgo war
War Horse Author Sir Michael Morpurgo: How Army Life Shaped My Writing
Writer Sir Michael Morpurgo has never been far from the hardships and heartbreak war can bring - having spent time in the Army and growing up in a post-war England.
The author of War Horse and countless other children's best-sellers, whose latest involvement with the military community has been championing the athletes taking part in the Invictus UK Trials in Sheffield, has told of his own experiences while serving in the Armed Forces and the influence this has had on his life and career.
Speaking to Forces Network, he said:
“It was the best time of my life for making friends, it was the worst time of my life for people shouting at me,”
He said that he felt like it was a natural fit for him to sign up to the British Army, joining after finishing school.
He was awarded a two-year scholarship as an officer-cadet at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.
However, he soon found that Army life was not for him with a decisive moment dawning on him while out was out on exercise in the winter of 1962.
“I remember being on lookout, looking out across this wasteland of snow coming down and thinking of the Christmas Truce in 1914.
"And I did think, 'Is this what I want to be doing, would we not be better doing what the German soldiers and the British soldiers did, getting up and shaking hands, maybe that’s what we should be doing?' … It was one of those moments where I thought again. It was also too cold to do again.”
He beat a retreat from Sandhurst after one year, informing his company commander of his decision.
Morpurgo then turned towards teaching, and to university, a first step in what would take him on to becoming the award-winning author he is today.
He now has more than 100 books to his name, including the most noticeably famous 'War Horse' and his newest book 'Boy Giant' which is out later on this year.
Without his brief tim I was born a really long time ago. 5th October 1943. In St Alban’s in Hertfordshire. My mother was there too, strangely enough, but my father was away at the war, in Baghdad. I had one older brother, Pieter. We both were evacuated to Northumberland when we were little, away from the bombs. After the war it was all change at home, not that I remember much of it. My mother wanted to be with a man she had met while my father was away in the army. He was called Jack Morpurgo. So my father came home to find there was no place for him. There was a divorce. Jack Morpurgo married my mother, and so became our stepfather. We lived in London then. We went to primary school at St Matthias in the Warwick Road, then were sent off to boarding school in Sussex – the Abbey, Ashhurst Wood. I was there for six years, hated being away from home, loved rugby and singing. Then I went off to a school in Canterbury, The King’s School, where I got more used to being away from home and still loved rugby and singing. We wore strange uniforms, wing collars, black jackets, boaters. And when I was older I got to wear a scarlet gown which made me feel very important. went into the army, to Sandhurst, where officers are trained. Liked the uniforms and the good food and the friends I made, but hated being shouted at. Decided the army life was not for me. Met a girl called Clare who agreed with me and we got married, really young, because we loved one another. Had children really young, three of them. Went off to university at King’s College, London to start all over again. I got my degree, just, and decided to be a teacher. I had done a little bit before and liked it. So found myself in front of a class of children for the first time. Scary! But I loved reading stories to them. They seemed to like that too. We moved around a lot from school to school, which was quite unsettling for everyone, but finally ended up teaching in a little village primary school in Kent, at Wickhambreaux, where I ran British children's writer (born 1943) Sir Michael Andrew Bridge MorpurgoOBE FRSL FKC DL (néBridge; 5 October 1943) is an English book author, poet, playwright, and librettist who is known best for children's novels such as War Horse (1982). 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 the trenches of the First World War. Morpurgo was the third Children's Laureate, from 2003 to 2005, and is President of BookTrust, a children's reading charity. Morpurgo was born in 1943 in St Albans, Hertfordshire, as Michael Andrew Bridge, the second child of actor Tony Van Bridge and actress Kippe Cammaerts (daughter of the writer and poet Émile Cammaerts). Both RADA graduates, his parents had met when they were acting in the same repertory company in 1938. His father came from a working-class family, while his mother's family included actors, an opera singer, writers, and poets. They were married in 1941 while Van Bridge, having been called up in 1939 and by then stationed in Scotland, was on leave from the army. Morpurgo's brother Pieter was born in 1942. When Morpurgo was born the following year, his father was stationed in Baghdad. While Van Bridge was away at war, Kippe Cammaerts met Jack Morpurgo (subsequently professor of American Literature at the University of Leeds). When Van Bridge returned to England in 1946, Cammaerts obtained a divorce from him and married Jack Morpurgo in 1947. Although they were not formally adopted, Morpurgo and his brother took on their step-father's name. Morpurgo's older brother, Pieter Morpurgo, later became a BBC television producer and director.[1
It's been a shamefully long time since I did a review. My fellow reviewer will not be contributing to this. I made the fatal mistake of buying her the first two Georgia Nicholsonbooks, and so all hope was lost as far as horsey book reviewing went. Added to that, she is now off in Germany on her school trip, wildly excited as this is the first time she has been Abroad. She was so full of whoomph she managed to get up effortlessly at 3.00 am on Wednesday so we could get to Kettering in time for the 4.15 am start. Although I am definitely a lark, and usually wake at 5.00 am at this time of year, 3.00 am was pushing it a little, particularly as I didn't sleep well, being too petrified of oversleeping and missing the off..... despite having own mobile, son's and husband's all set for a 3.00 am alarm call.
When son did this trip (though it was France in his case) one of his friends did miss the coach, and so his mother chased it down the M1 before finally catching up at a service station.
But I digress.
War Horse is near the top, if not at the top of all the books I've read for my survey of the modern pony book. That said, it's not a pony book: it is a story about a horse: perhaps more of a successor to Black Beauty than anything else. Like Black Beauty it's written in the first person. My heart sank when I started the book and realised this was how it was written. Normally I don't like first person narratives when the narrator is a horse. It takes a skilled writer to make the first person narrative work, and for it to work when you are pretending to be a horse needs more than average skill. Often a horse telling its own story tends to produce a trite and not particularly believable story. Horses don't experience human emotions, and writing as if they do lessens the horse and its story.
Joey, the book's equine hero, soon emerges as a completely credible horse. The emotions he feels: affection for those who show kindness to him; loyalty and affection for Topthorn, Michael Morpurgo
Early life