Michael Morpurgo
Sir Michael Andrew Bridge Morpurgo OBE FRSL FKC DL (né Bridge; 5 October 1943)[1] 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",[2] 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 World War I. Morpurgo became the third Children's Laureate, from 2003 to 2005,[3] and he is also the current President of BookTrust, the UK's largest children's reading charity.[4]
Michael Morpurgo
Michael Andrew Bridge
5 October 1943
St Albans, Hertfordshire, United Kingdom
- Author
- poet
- playwright
3
Tony Van Bridge (father)
Kippe Cammaerts (mother)
Early life[edit]
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 (born Catherine Noel Kippe Cammaerts, daughter of writer and poet Émile Cammaerts).[5] Both RADA graduates, his parents had met when they were acting in the same repertory company in 1938.[6] His father came from a working-class family, while Kippe came from a family of actors, an opera singer, writers and poets.[6] 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.[6] Morpurgo's brother Pieter was born in 1942. When Morpurgo was born the following year, his father was stationed in Baghdad.[1] While Van Bridge was away at war, Kippe Cammaerts met Jack Morpurgo (subsequently professor of American Literature at the University of Leeds from 1969 to 1982[7]). When Van Bridge returned to England in 1946, he and Cammaerts obtained a divorce and Cammaerts married Jack Morpurgo the same year. Although they were not formally adopted, Morpurgo and his brother took on their step-father's name.[8][9] Morpurgo's older brother, Pieter Morpurgo,[1] later became a BBC television producer and director.[10] He has two younger siblings, Mark and Kay.[9] Morpurgo's mother was frail, having suffered a breakdown when she was 19, and grieved the loss of her brother Pieter, who was killed in the war in 1941, for the rest of her life.[6]
Morpurgo and his brother were evacuated to Northumberland when they were very young.[1] After returning to London, the family lived in Philbeach Gardens, Earl's Court, where the children played on nearby bombsites.[11][12] Morpurgo went to primary school at St Matthias, Earl's Court. The family later moved to Bradwell-on-Sea in Essex, where Morpurgo would live during the school holidays,[13] having been sent to boarding school in Sussex when he was seven years old. The school was very strict and the boys were beaten frequently. During this period Morpurgo developed a stutter.[14] His unhappy experiences at boarding school would later inform his novel The Butterfly Lion.[8] After six years at The Abbey School in Ashurst Wood,[1] Morpurgo then went to the King's School, an independent school in Canterbury, Kent, where he felt less homesick than at his previous school.
Morpurgo did not learn who his biological father was until he was 19 years old.[15] After the divorce from Michael's mother, Van Bridge had emigrated to Canada and was never talked about. Morpurgo never saw an image of his father until, while watching the 1962 CBC version of Great Expectations on TV with his mother, she recognised Van Bridge in the role of Magwitch and said to Michael "That's your father!"[16] They met in person nine years later.[16]
Morpurgo's stepfather was not encouraging to his sons and was disappointed that they were not meeting his expectations for them of going into academia like him, calling Michael "a bear with very little brain."[14][17] His stepfather decided he should join the army and Morpurgo attended the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.[15] He quickly realised that a soldier's life was not for him and left after nine months.[18] He said late that reading the poems of the First World War poets when he was a young soldier were "part of the reason I left the army and became a teacher and then a writer of many books about war in which a longing for peace and reconciliation is always evident."[19]
Morpurgo later went to study at King's College London, reading English, French, and Philosophy,[20] and graduated with a third class degree.[21] He then joined the teaching profession[15] with a job at Wickhambreaux Primary School in Canterbury, Kent.[22] He also, in 1968, briefly taught at St. Faith's School in Cambridge.[23]
Career[edit]
From teaching to writing novels[edit]
It was not until he was teaching in Kent that Morpurgo discovered his vocation in life, of which he later said "I could see there was magic in it for them, and realized there was magic in it for me."[24]
Morpurgo's writing career was inspired by Ted Hughes' Poetry in the Making, Paul Gallico's The Snow Goose and Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea.[2] Hughes and another poet, Seán Rafferty, were influential in his career, with Hughes becoming a friend, mentor and neighbour. Morpurgo credits Hughes and Rafferty with giving him the confidence to write War Horse, his most successful work to date.[25]
Works[edit]
Morpurgo is the author of dozens of books, including the notable titles:
Personal life[edit]
Aged 19, Morpurgo married Clare Lane, eldest daughter of Sir Allen Lane, the founder of Penguin Books, in 1963.[80][81] They had met the previous year on holiday in Corfu through Morpurgo's stepfather, who was an editor at Penguin at the time.[82] Lane was pregnant with their first child and Morpurgo has referred to it as a shotgun wedding.[81] Their three children are all named after Shakespearian characters.[14]
Morpurgo was diagnosed with laryngeal cancer in 2017 and received radiotherapy.[83] He has since recovered.[14]
Political views[edit]
In a January 2014 article, Morpurgo stated "as we begin to mark the century of the first world war, we should honour those who died, most certainly, and gratefully too, but we should never glorify. Come each November over the next four years, let the red poppy and the white poppy be worn together to honour those who died, to keep our faith with them, to make of this world a place where freedom and peace can reign together."[88]
In August 2014, Morpurgo was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian expressing their hope that Scotland would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom in September's referendum on that issue.[89]
Prior to the 2015 general election, he was one of several celebrities who endorsed the parliamentary candidacy of the Green Party's Caroline Lucas.[90]
In 2016, he condemned government plans to extend grammar schools as divisive and "quite deeply stupid".[91]
In the run-up to the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, Morpurgo expressed his support for the European Union in an interview with the BBC,[92] and reinforced this with a ten-minute BBC Radio 4 'Point of View' on 5 August 2018.
Honors and appointments[edit]
Morpurgo and his wife Clare were each appointed Members of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 1999 Birthday Honours for services to young people. He was advanced to Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2006 Birthday Honours for services to literature and was made a Knight Bachelor in the 2018 New Year Honours for services to literature and charity.[93][94][95][96]
In 2012, Morpurgo was made an Honorary Graduate of the University of Suffolk.
Morpurgo was awarded an honorary doctorate at Bishop Grosseteste University on 17 July 2013.[97] He was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters (D.Litt.) by Newcastle University on 12 July 2017.[98]
Morpurgo was appointed a Deputy Lieutenant for Devon on 10 April 2015.[99]
Morpurgo is also President of BookTrust, the UK's largest children's reading charity. [4]
On 9 November 2023 Morpurpogo was awarded an honorary doctorate at University of Plymouth,[100] after writing almost all of his 150 books in the county of Devon.