Once upon a time there was a boy called Michael. He loved listening to his mother read him bedtime stories. When he grew up, Michael went on to write more than 100 books for children. In fact he became so famous that other people began to write books about him.
Leading the cavalry charge months after the Steven Spielberg movie adaptation of his book War Horse and the phenomenal success of the West End puppet show, also based on the book, which saw grown-ups weeping in the stalls, we have Michael Morpurgo: War Child to War Horse. It is the first signficant biography of the beloved children’s author and former children’s laureate, who thanks to the unexpected triumph of his 1982 novel has become a rich man — and a national treasure.
And as behoves a national treasure, a book ought to be produced. Morpurgo has chosen not to write a memoir but to join forces with Maggie Fergusson, by agreeing to tell (some of) his life story. He has also provided seven short stories, only two of which are original.
The result is an odd and slightly uncomfortable set-up. Perhaps due to his collaboration and his all-round niceness — his easy writing style has cast a calm, seductive spell over children for generations — this biography fails to fully flesh out the man. Born in 1943, Morpurgo grew up in the shadow of the second world war playing in blitzed-out bomb sites of London. His was a family “which had at its heart tension” — Jack Morpurgo was not his biological father, and Morpurgo is still so distressed by Jack’s vicious epistolary assault on his mother that led to the break-up of their marriage that he has never read the full correspondence. Poignantly, one of Morpurgo’s closest school friends tells Fergusson: “You’ll never really know Michael, and he’ll never really know himself.” Somehow, it is this haunted figure that one wants to get to know.
Fourth Estate £18.99/ebook £9.99 pp307, ST Bookshop price £14.99