Michael Morpurgo was born on October 5th, He was born in St. Albans in the United Kingdom and is currently 70 years old. Log in. Michael Morpurgo. Study now. See Answer. Best Answer. Author Michael Morpurgo was born in , so saw his 67th birthday. Study guides.
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One thing was for sure: we were not floundering any more. We had our hearts set on making this work. Every week the children came we had one very clear aim in our heads — to make it as intense an experience as possible, to make it a week that would build their self-confidence and self-worth as they worked out on the farm, a week full of fun, too, the most memorable week of their young lives.
There was an unexpected bonus to this new life of ours. Working with these children was giving me new insights into the lives of children, insights that were meat and drink to me as a writer. I found myself in the privileged position of being able to discover how children and animals interacted, how growing confidence and familiarity banished anxiety. There seemed so often to be a natural understanding between them.
I was witnessing every day how the children responded to the unfamiliarity of the countryside around them, to the impenetrable blackness of the dark, to the harshness of a cold wind, the smells of new-mown hay and the cow yard, to the stillness and the silence.
I came home each day my head full of all I'd seen and heard and felt. Every week was as much a life-enhancing experience for me as for the children. As the years passed, and I got to know the place and the people among whom we made our home and lived and worked, Clare and I began to feel that we belonged here.
And with that sense of belonging came the notion that I might one day write a book set in our village, and that an animal and a child, and the trust and affection of one for the other, would be at the heart of my story. No fledgling writer ever got luckier than I did then. Some writers — most, I suspect — write in isolation.
I think I'd always found that quite difficult. And now great good fortune brought me into contact with two of the finest poets of the 20th century. Sean Rafferty happened to be a wonderful lyrical poet and playwright.
His plays had been put on in London in the s and 40s, in the Players' Theatre, but he had since published very little. He did not talk about his writing but would give us poems, hand-written, from time to time, at Christmas and birthdays. And we would spend long evenings by Sean and Peggy's fireside in Burrow Cottage sipping Bordeaux and talking poetry — Sean was passionate about Yeats and Eliot. He was probably the best-read man I ever knew, a wise man with a gentle spirit who had now become like a father to Clare and me.
His was a voice of encouragement and reassurance as I struggled to find my own way as a writer. The other poet who came into our lives was Ted Hughes. His Poetry in the Making had been a programme I'd gone back and back to, to inspire me and the children I was teaching.
I knew of no more powerful invitation to write. And now, shortly after we moved down to Devon, we discovered Ted Hughes was a near neighbour and met him by chance one summer's evening down by the River Torridge, which borders the farm. He loomed up out of the half dark, fishing rod in hand, greeted us warmly but made it clear he was fishing.
He would come and see us later. So he did. Already good friends of Sean and Peggy Rafferty, as he had been a frequenter of the Duke of York, he became very quickly a towering figure in our lives, largely because he was at once deeply sympathetic to all we were trying to achieve at Farms for City Children. The whole idea resonated strongly with him, growing up as he had done as a boy on the Yorkshire Moors.
He became our first president, came to read to the children sometimes, helped hugely with fundraising. Here's what he wrote for us when, 10 years on, we opened our second farm for city children at Treginnis Isaf, on the coast near St David's in Wales:. Hushed by the sea and the sky Can hear a high gull cry God rides in the wind Above Treginnis. But most importantly for us, he and his wife Carol kept our spirits up over many long dark winters, gave us the strength to get through hard times.
Ted and I worked on a book together. All Around the Year was my diary of a year on the Ward family farm, for which Ted wrote a poem for each month. After its publication in , Ted and Sean and I regularly exchanged gifts of our stories and poems, and never once did they make me feel I was the minnow of the group — although I most certainly was.
I did more listening than talking, quaffed wine and sat at their feet, drinking in their words and their wit and their wisdom.
They were happy times for all of us. But it was at a moment of disappointment and failure that Ted gave me the most wonderful gift. Through this close contact with Ted and Sean, with my confidence boosted, I felt I was ready to tackle a subject that I knew would test me.
I had discovered that in the First World War a million horses had been killed — and that was only on our side. Up at the Duke of York I had met an old soldier who had been at the Front with the Devon Yeomanry, "with 'orses", he said. He told me how he used to confide his worst fears, his deepest feelings, to his horse as he fed him at night. I had been so moved by this. I knew almost as I was listening to him that I had to tell the story of a farm horse that leaves our village in , bought as a cavalry horse for by the British army, that is captured by the Germans and winters on a French farm.
I wanted to write the story of the universal suffering of that dreadful war, seen through the eyes of a horse. But I wasn't at all convinced I could do it until one November evening when I walked up to read to the children at Nethercott, as I often did. There was a boy there that week who had not spoken at school since he arrived there two years before.
He was a nervous, withdrawn child who, I was told by the teachers, did not speak because he had an appalling stammer. He had said not a word all week on the farm, had kept himself to himself, but clearly loved being with the animals, stroking the calves, feeding the hens. I came into the yard that evening to see the light on over the stable, with our horse Hebe standing there, and this same boy in his slippers looking up into her eye, and talking 19 to the dozen about his day on the farm.
I went and fetched the teachers. I thought they should see this. We stood there marvelling at this small miracle. I knew as I watched that the horse was listening, and understanding — not the words themselves. But she knew and felt that the boy loved her, and that it was important that she listened. I knew at that moment I could and should write my book. I'd call it War Horse. The book came out in and was shortlisted for the Whitbread prize.
I'd not been shortlisted before, and so was hugely excited on the day we went up to London for the award ceremony. War Horse didn't win. I returned on the night sleeper feeling rather low, and wondering if I could ever sit down and write a book again. The next morning I found myself as usual milking the cows with a dozen children.
They'd all heard, and were sad for me. I put the best brave face on it, but it wasn't easy. The phone rang during breakfast.
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