‘Every war seems a kind of holocaust .. all we have is stories’

Sir Michael Morpurgo on unlearned lessons of conflict, Brexit and why he could have been Robert Redford

I’M A fortunate man, a lucky old

parrot,” declares Sir Michael

Morpurgo, former children’s

laureate and author of the much

loved, bestselling novel War Horse and more than 100 other powerful classics, such as Private Peaceful and Why the Whales Came. The St Albansborn 75-year-old, who was given a knighthood this year for services to literature and charity, is referring to his recovery from cancer of the larynx, which was diagnosed last year and for which he underwent radiotherapy at London’s Royal Marsden.

During his convalescence, he has written that, “besides Marie Curie,” he thought of his children, grandchildren and great-grandchild as well as all the young people he taught during his ten years as a teacher before moving with his wife Clare and their three children to Devon to set up the charity Farms for City Children.

“Those children were all the hope I needed, lying there in the hospital being healed. It wasn’t only the radiotherapy that did the healing. It was the memories of the children, too.”

And, of course, he must have thought of the generations of children who have thrilled to his ability to tell wonderful stories, particularly the heartbreaking War Horse. The magnificent, multiple award-winning stage version of that novel has been seen by more than seven million people worldwide, despite the fact that he thought the theatremakers were mad to think they could tell his 1982 story – which later became a Steven Spielberg movie starring Benedict Cumberbatch – with the aid of puppets. “But it wasn’t ridiculous, it was genius.”

Today Morpurgo is rosy-cheeked and fizzing with energy, when we meet in a swanky Covent Garden hotel – not his choice or mine – and he tells me he has made a remarkable recovery. “I am a cured man – if anyone is ever cured. The doctors are really pleased with me.” Only days earlier he had a check-up and was told he does not have to see his “fantastic” surgeon again for several months – “a wonderful feeling!”

It’s splendid news since he talks up a storm in conversation and is astonishingly busy. He has just returned from Ypres, which he visits often, is about to do a mini-tour of the latest iteration of War Horse, The Story in Concert, which comes to Edinburgh on November 18, and he has another new children’s story, Poppy Field, in which he reimagines Lt Col John McCrae’s famous poem In Flanders Field through the eyes of a young girl who meets McCrae as he is writing his poem and rescues his discarded draft.

I ask Morpurgo, who exudes courtly charm, about his health because he narrates – alongside award-winning actress Juliet Stevenson – the War Horse Story in Concert. They will have the assistance of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra playing composer Adrian Sutton’s specially arranged score, with songs by John Tams and animations by artist Rae Smith, whose designs for the National Theatre production won an Olivier, a Tony and many other awards.

ANYWAY, he’s in fine voice. When he did the original concert performances, in 2016, with his friend Joanna Lumley, he recalls having “a funny voice. I thought I was getting a bit croaky but it turned out to be something more serious. But here I am back onstage with Juliet and a 65-piece orchestra. It’s an absolute joy to be able to tell one’s stories in this way. In 2016, we performed at the Albert Hall. And now the Usher Hall! What more could a fellow want!”

There is, of course, an added poignancy for him to be telling the deeply affecting story of Devonshire lad Albert and his beloved horse Joey in Scotland shortly after the centenary of Armistice Day.

“The whole four years have been rather extraordinary because people have taken the centenary to heart in the best possible way,” he says, revealing that he was rather dreading that it would descend into nostalgia. “But I think we have matured quite a bit in how we look at it now. There has been so much in the arts and literature to help people comprehend and think about the Great War. It’s been one of those moments when people have taken stock because of its horrors, its violence and its intensity, and the whole business of the war machine.

“There was, of course, this notion that we would never do this sort of thing again. It was just too terrible. The war to end all wars. But, as we know, this is what we do all the time –

the sadness of it. That promise being unfulfilled just 20 years later with greater destruction and then the atomic bomb, leading to the age we are in now with the destruction of civilians and razing of cities. Every war seems a kind of holocaust, and that started with the First World War, but we don’t seem to have learnt, despite all the remembering – although it is not remembering because there is nothing left. None of us can remember anything.”

Pausing to stir his coffee, he says softly: “All we have is stories.”

Recently he has shared the story of his two uncles in his book In the Mouth of the Wolf: Pieter, who was in the RAF, died aged 21, and Frances became a conscientious objector. It was Morpurgo’s way of remembering them and all the millions of “the mouthless dead”. Storytelling is, he believes, “passing it on from generation to generation. There are generations who have grown up with no sense of impending conflict. We grew up under the ‘umbrella’ of nuclear threat, but we have not known what it means to have one big project as a nation: survival. I think we have taken our peace for granted. We do this blinkered thing.”