| Fifty-nine years ago, a little boy aged seven trudged along resolutely in the pouring rain, hoping to make the 150 km journey to London.
There is only one possible thing he could have been doing, and that was running away- from a school he hated.
Little was Michael Morpurgo to know then that memories of his boarding school and his attempt to leave, would form the beginning of the plot in his book-‘The Butterfly Lion’ which would be read and loved by countless readers the world over. “I was born in 1943- in the thick of the war,” he reminisces in an exclusive interview with The Sunday Times, “and I was sent away to boarding school at the age of seven. I didn’t like that school. I didn’t like the food (and food, for a seven-year-old, is very important!). I didn’t like the teachers. Added to all this, they were cruel to us.
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“So at one point I decided that I could not live that life any longer,” he continues. “I decided to, at whatever cost, make the long journey back home. I had barely travelled two km in the pouring rain, when a little old lady drove past. She stopped and asked me where I was running off to, and took me to her home. I pleaded with her, not to phone my parents or tell my school that I had run away and so she took me back to school where I was able to creep back in unnoticed.”
“So writing a book is sometimes a lifetime process; because you always put something of yourself and how you have grown over the years, and this was certainly the case with The Butterfly Lion.”
Recounting the experience had not been as difficult as Michael imagined, because speaking of his early life was a form of therapy. “It also made me realize that I had never been alone: my peers had to deal with the same troubles, and I know now that I found comfort and sympathy in the company I had.”
What spurred this author to start writing was in fact, a practical reason. Seeing his students bored by the book that was being read to them, he decided to relate his own stories. “I could see that there was magic in it for them,” he recalls, “and so there was magic in it for me.”
Thirty-five years and approximately 117 books later, this prolific weaver of tales continues to perform his magic, drawing inspiration from sights, sounds and happenings around him, and from those who are most special to him- children.
As Michael stood on the lawn at the British Council last Tuesday, reading animatedly to a bunch of excited children who clung on to his every word, it was all too easy to see his love for them.
“They have a certain emotional strength that is too often unnoticed and underestimated by adults,” says Michael with reference to the consistently strong characters around whom his stories revolve. “So children are always at the heart of my books; they are the ones who make things happen, who help make a difference. So my characters are not created purely for the purpose of inspiration but because I have experienced the inner strength and will to survive that is an important part of a child’s spirit.”
For Michael Morpurgo, every story written needs a way of telling. Like an actor, he buries himself in each new character he creates, finding the right voice and conviction of character which is so important to how a story is told.
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Unlike more conventional modern writers, Michael’s stories are first brought to life on a simple exercise book- a habit which cannot be shed now. (“And anyway, writing is also about habit, in a way!”) Sitting propped up on a couch or bed, he makes himself perfectly comfortable before starting. “I believe,” he says, “that in order to write well, you need to be comfortable with yourself and your surroundings. Having lost five chapters of a story after saving them on a computer, I lost my confidence in computers. And I need confidence to write.”
He admits though that the biggest pleasure in his stories comes from his dream time and not so much from putting the story down on paper. “In dreams, everything is possible, but once you begin to write down your dreams you need to tailor them a little to make them sound more realistic.”
And the stories are mostly real- or at least partly real. One of his personal favourites- ‘Kensuke’s Kingdom’- of a Japanese soldier who remained on a deserted island after World War II, originated from a small article in the New York Times, about the soldier. The rest of the story, as Michael says, just fell into place of its own accord: “I was at one of those parties where, somehow the most boring person on earth ends up by your side. As I inched away from him, I found myself next to a young man who told me of a sailing trip he had been on, with his wife, son and dog- Stella Artois.”
A merging of the two stories, a fascination for islands and stories set on islands, and a letter from a young boy, asking for a story of a boy on a deserted island, is what made Kensuke’s Kingdom.
Morpurgo’s next favourite- Private Peaceful, came from records of court martials, unfair trials and the unspeakable horrors faced by soldiers in World War I. “There were instances,” he explains, “where soldiers were shot for minor offences like sleeping on duty- they were punished that way as an example to others. I absolutely detested the injustice of it, and this led to Private Peaceful being one of the most intense books I had ever written.”
To read Michael Morpurgo’s books is to know the author himself- a fun-loving yet passionate writer, multiple award winner and one-time Children’s Laureate.
Here to attend the Galle Literary Festival which ends today, Michael is having an amazing time witnessing the sights and sounds of Sri Lanka, and thanks The British Council for making his time here possible. “And,” he adds, “who knows what story will come my way whilst I’m here? That may just be a new book in the making…”
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