Interview: A lesson with Michael Morpurgo

Michael Morpurgo became a story-teller when teaching London primary school children in his late twenties. “There were 35 children in the class. I found that using a book [to teach] came between them and me.” He felt he needed to speak to them directly, with tales that grew from the “common ground” of experience between teacher and pupils. This, Morpurgo says, is why he writes as he does.

We meet at the National Army Museum for the launch of an exhibition timed to coincide with the release of Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Morpurgo’s War Horse in the New Year.

The exhibition is titled ‘War Horse: Fact & Fiction’ and the tension between fact and fiction interests Morpurgo as a novelist. Fellow children’s writer Maurice Sendak, author of Where the Wild Things Are, recently said that he would “never lie to children”. I ask Morpurgo if he agrees with Sendak. “It depends what you mean by lie,” he says.