When town meets country

Introducing an extract from his latest book for children, Michael Morpurgo reflects on the importance of the countryside for all youngsters, especially those growing up in the city

his story of Didn’t We Have a Lovely Time! is very much at the heart of what Farms for City Children is about, the charity that my wife, Clare, and i founded 40 years ago.

it is very special that now it’s being published as a book with illustrations by Quentin Blake and profits going to Farms for City Children. i have often called the charity my greatest story and it is. it’s also the inspiration for many of my books, including War Horse, which came

Tfrom witnessing the trust, mutual affection and understanding between our horse hebe and a young boy on the farm in Devon. My greatest story… the idea came upon us quite suddenly. My wife and i were young teachers in a primary school in Kent, but we felt that, whatever we did, we could never really make a difference—that the school system was inevitably failing half of the children and so were we. so, rather idealistically, we moved to Devon and, with money left by Clare’s father, Allen Lane, the founder of Penguin Books, we bought a farm, a large Victorian manor house, and set up a charity.

A year or so later, the first children came from a primary school in Birmingham and, with the help of the teachers and the neighbouring farmers—the Ward family—we pioneered a programme of work designed to extend children in every way possible out on the farm, physically, mentally, emotionally and intellectually.

Today, there are three farms in Pembrokeshire, Gloucestershire and Devon and more than 100,000 children have become farmers for a week, feeding animals, caring for them, digging the land and fetching hay and straw, clearing stones from fields and planting potatoes and sowing seeds. They spend a week away from their screens, playing games and learning to live together. And it’s hard work, real work, but they know it’s essential and important, that it matters to the animals, to the farm and each other. That it simply matters. They matter. (www.farmsforcitychildren.org; 01392 276381)