War Horse author Michael Morpurgo thrilled an audience of eight to 16 year olds this week at the New London theatre at an exclusive free Kids Week event.
Terrifically blunt and hilariously silly, the award-winning and much-loved writer treated the gathered audience to readings from his hugely successful books War Horse and Private Peaceful, offered an engrossing insight into the life of an author and revealed a huge surprise as the now world famous Joey came on stage to greet the wide-eyed children and equally excited parents.
Flick through our gallery of photos from the event above or read on for extracts from what proved to be a magical morning with a born entertainer who possesses almost as much stage presence as the awe-inspiring Joey himself.
The inspiration behind War Horse
Many years ago, I met two old men who lived in my village. These two men I knew had been to the First World War as soldiers. I’d spoken to them once or twice and I came into the pub and sat opposite one and asked him which regiment he was in. He said ‘I was there with the horses.’ He just started talking, talking, talking. He told me so much about how it was to be a soldier in the First World War, but he also told me that his best friend in the war was his horse, he loved his horse.
He said: ‘I talked to my horse’ and then he said something quite remarkable, he said ‘And do you know? He really listened’ and he got very emotional. He said ‘I could tell the horse all the things I couldn’t tell my chums. I couldn’t tell my chums that I was frightened of dying the next day, I couldn’t tell them that because they were all thinking the same thing.’ It’s the first time I’d ever heard of someone talking about an animal as if it was the same thing as a human being.
I wasn’t convinced it [the story] could work until an extraordinary thing happened. Where I live in Devon we have a farm, a strange farm because we have cows, sheep, pigs, horses, donkeys, ducks, chickens and children! We do not fattened up these children and kill them, what happens is the children come from big cities, like London, from primary schools, and they come and live and work on the farm for a whole week. That’s what my wife and I have been doing for the last 30 years.
On the last evening of their seven day week I go up and read them a story by the fireside. So I walked up there one evening and I walk into the yard and our horse is looking out over the stable door and there’s this boy standing there and I recognise him, he’s called Billy and he’s in his slippers and he shouldn’t be there because it’s raining. I was about to say ‘Billy go inside you’ll get wet!’ and I suddenly realised I’d been told about Billy. Billy is a strange boy who came from a home where I think things had been very difficult for him and he was very nervous and he had a dreadful stammer and stutter, so much so that the teachers had warned me that Billy never speaks. He’d been in that school for two years and never uttered a word, and one thing they did know was that if you tried to make him speak by asking him a question, Billy would run home. Everything to do with the animals, where of course you don’t need any sort of verbal communication, he loved the whole thing but he never spoke a word. When I came in that night, Billy was talking. I hid myself away and he was telling this horse all about what he’d done that day and he was talking and talking and talking, the words were tumbling out. I realised she [the horse] was listening, she was genuinely listening. I thought ‘hang on, it isn’t sentimental, I could do this’. I went back and I wrote the story.
From page to stage
What happened was really, really lucky. Normally with a book it stays a book, if it’s lucky it stays in print and some nice children read it. The more they read it, the more the publisher wants to publish it. The sad thing to tell you is that War Horse – I thought it was an alright book, wife thought it was a brilliant book – but very few people bought it and the publishers really nearly put it out of print. I was really lucky because something really magical happened about 25 years later. On the stage at the National they had put on a play by a wonderful author called Philip Pullman called His Dark Materials and for two years that was a really big success, then they put on a play called Coram Boy, which was also a big success, so they were looking for a third big success. One of the directors [Tom Morris] there thought ‘I want to work with these amazing puppeteers called Handspring Puppets. I want to bring them out onto a big, big stage at the National, with big puppets that will be the star of the show. These puppets will be amazing, but I need a story.’ He tried to find a story with a big animal at the centre of the story and he read this and that and all sorts of rubbish and didn’t find one. What he did though, which was really lucky, is that he went home for Christmas after two years of looking for this animal story. His mum said: ‘Oh Tom, I heard this man on the radio the other day on a programme called Desert Island Discs and he was called Michael something, I can’t remember his second name because it’s impossible to pronounce, but he says he’d written a book called War Horse and I went down to Oxfam and bought a copy and it’s really good and you should read it Tom.’
The puppets
They told me they wanted to make a play with puppets [makes bemused face]. I thought ‘are you stupid? Puppets?!’ In my head I’ll tell you what I couldn’t stop thinking of, do you know what a pantomime horse looks like? I mean laughable! All of it seemed to me to be ridiculous, so I said ‘Honestly, it doesn’t sound all that brilliant.’ He said ‘Would you come up, I’m going to show you a video of the work of Handspring Puppets’. So I went up to London to the National Theatre and there’s a tiny little screen, they pressed a button and on came in black and white the most extraordinary puppet I’d ever seen. It was a giraffe, more than life sized, operated by three people. And when I saw that on this little screen, I knew that something magical would happen.
Being an author
The truth is I think every author arrives at being an author through a different route. I don’t think you can sit down and say to yourself ‘I’m going to be an author’ and then just do it. I think you have to do all sorts of odd things first. For a start you’ve got to be a child. Can you manage that? Then you have to read lots of books. It’s really important to read what other people have written – read the back of cornflake packages so that your head is full of words! Then it’s really good to practise, maybe by writing a diary.
Most important, anyone who wants to become an author has to keep their eyes and ears and mind and heart open. Because you have to receive everything there is about the world that interests you into your brain, into your memory, it has to become part of you. You’ll say ‘Well I do that all the time’, well good for you because there are plenty of people who don’t, people who reach a certain age and they shut quite a lot of it away from themselves. You have to keep yourself open, that way all the complications and the difficulties and the joys and the sorrows of the world will flood into your brain.
I don’t write for children, I write about children. I write stories for me! If you look at me really hard, inside this 69 year old man you will see if you look hard enough a 59 year old man, a 49 year old man, a 39 year old man, you will see a nine year old boy, then you will see a five year old boy. You don’t forget who you are simply because you put on slightly more weight, lose hair and get a few wrinkles. What actually happens is that you remember everything. For me and for you our most important time in our lives is our childhood, I don’t know why but you remember it really, really well. Probably because things are happening to you for the first time. I write about my memories, other people’s memories, because I’ve been a child myself, a father myself, a grandfather myself, a teacher myself. They interest me. You [points to audience] interest me.
This year’s Kids Week runs throughout August. Offering one free child’s ticket for every adult ticket purchased, there are still tickets on sale for a range of top West End shows. Visit www.kidsweek.co.uk for full details.