:00:00. > :00:00.meters are welcomed by consumer groups. Now it is time for Meet the
:00:00. > :00:00.Author. My guest today describes himself
:00:00. > :00:07.as oldish, married with three children, and a grandfather
:00:08. > :00:10.eight times over. But there is far more
:00:11. > :00:13.to his story than that. Michael Morpurgo is the author
:00:14. > :00:17.of more than 130 books, the most famous being War Horse,
:00:18. > :00:21.which he wrote in 1982. It tells the story of
:00:22. > :00:24.the First World War through the eyes It was later turned into a play
:00:25. > :00:29.at The National Theatre, and since then it has become
:00:30. > :00:32.an international phenomenon. It has been seen by more
:00:33. > :00:36.than seven million people around the world, taken more
:00:37. > :00:39.than ?300 million at the box office The play has run for seven
:00:40. > :00:44.years in London. It finally comes
:00:45. > :01:03.to an end this month. War Horse has been good
:01:04. > :01:05.to you, Michael Morpurgo. I wonder how sorry you are
:01:06. > :01:08.that it is coming to an end How could you be sorry after seven
:01:09. > :01:15.or eight years of it, I shall miss it for a bit,
:01:16. > :01:22.but then it's going on tour in a year's time around the UK,
:01:23. > :01:25.so it will come back again, I think, and I hope it
:01:26. > :01:28.will come back to London too. We have got some
:01:29. > :01:30.scenes from the show. I, Albert Narracott,
:01:31. > :01:54.do solemnly swear that we shall You must have seen those 100 times,
:01:55. > :02:01.you'e still smiling. I wonder, what was your response
:02:02. > :02:03.when you were first approached I mean, it came over the phone,
:02:04. > :02:11.the conversation, an invitation really to go to London to see
:02:12. > :02:15.the work on camera of Handsspring It was Tom Morris, who was creative
:02:16. > :02:19.director at The National Theatre, I have to say, I thought it was not
:02:20. > :02:26.a good idea to do it with puppets. I would love to be able to say,
:02:27. > :02:30.yes, I was right behind it I was behind the fact
:02:31. > :02:33.it was The National Theatre, because they had done wonderful work
:02:34. > :02:36.with Philip Pullman's book They had done these wonderful shows
:02:37. > :02:41.which reached out to a new audience. So I was flattered they wanted to do
:02:42. > :02:43.it with War Horse. Then they said they were going to do
:02:44. > :02:47.it with puppets, and I thought, Puppets, the First World War,
:02:48. > :02:51.how is that going to work?" So I did not have faith
:02:52. > :02:53.until I saw the puppets, and in fact I saw a giraffe
:02:54. > :02:56.which these Handsspring Puppets people had made, walking
:02:57. > :02:58.across a studio floor, I was thinking, excuse me,
:02:59. > :03:02.this is not even a real giraffe, Somehow, it was so extraordinarily
:03:03. > :03:07.moving, this kind of connection But even then, I still couldn't see
:03:08. > :03:17.how they were going to weave And the rest, as they
:03:18. > :03:20.say, is history. Let us take you back to the early
:03:21. > :03:24.80s, when you wrote this book. I moved to Devon with my family,
:03:25. > :03:32.and got to know people Among them were three old men, then,
:03:33. > :03:37.who had been alive at the time And I got talking to them,
:03:38. > :03:43.and one of them told me one day The conversation went on and on,
:03:44. > :03:49.and it then became a monologue, and it was about his time
:03:50. > :03:52.in the First World War. It was fascinating for me,
:03:53. > :03:55.because of course I had, like so many, I had read my
:03:56. > :03:57.First World War poets, I had been brought up
:03:58. > :04:03.on all that stuff. But here I was, sitting
:04:04. > :04:06.across the fire side at my local pub, talking to someone who had
:04:07. > :04:08.actually been there. I was just blown away,
:04:09. > :04:11.is the modern expression, I think, by, I suppose,
:04:12. > :04:14.the simplicity of what he said, the seriousness of what he said,
:04:15. > :04:18.the cruelty of it all. The futility, as
:04:19. > :04:22.Wilfred Owen put it. I just went home and I could think
:04:23. > :04:27.of nothing else and could any of nothing else, and then rang up
:04:28. > :04:30.the Imperial War Museum and asked many horses had gone
:04:31. > :04:33.to the First World War. They said about a million from these
:04:34. > :04:36.shores, and I said how Because I had already had the idea
:04:37. > :04:42.in the pub of writing this story I absolutely wanted this to be
:04:43. > :04:50.a story of thes First World War told through the eyes of a neutral
:04:51. > :04:53.observer, connected to the British, connected to the Germans,
:04:54. > :04:56.connected to the French and Belgians over whose land the war
:04:57. > :04:59.had been fought. I thought that was the way to tell
:05:00. > :05:02.it anew, and also to bring it to young people, so they could have
:05:03. > :05:06.some kind of way of being introduced Because it's easy to forget,
:05:07. > :05:16.isn't it, that when the book first came out it wasn't reviewed very
:05:17. > :05:19.widely, and when it was, No, it took The National Theatre
:05:20. > :05:24.to come along, and 25 years later for goodness sake,
:05:25. > :05:27.and that is because it suited what Tom Morris
:05:28. > :05:30.at The National Theatre was looking for, which was a story which had
:05:31. > :05:33.at its heart an animal, so that he could use both the great
:05:34. > :05:38.stage at The National Theatre and Handspring Puppets -
:05:39. > :05:41.and they're wonderful puppets - I don't know what to call it -
:05:42. > :05:46.a play, a musical, a show. It's a theatrical
:05:47. > :05:47.phenomenon, really. He and Marianne Elliott
:05:48. > :05:52.and Nick Hytner, they wove This was one of your earliest books,
:05:53. > :05:58.you have written dozens since then. How comfortable do you feel
:05:59. > :06:01.with the fact that this is the book For goodness sake, to be defined
:06:02. > :06:10.by a book, it's as good as anything. Actually, so many of the books
:06:11. > :06:16.that we know and love and we grow up with - you know, Wind
:06:17. > :06:19.in the Willows, you have to think twice before you remember who wrote
:06:20. > :06:22.it, do you know what I mean? All right, I know,
:06:23. > :06:26.but you do have to think. That's what really counts
:06:27. > :06:31.and it is the book. What's really lovely
:06:32. > :06:33.is there have been other books. This is my wife's favourite book,
:06:34. > :06:36.and that irks me, because she always said it was good, and her favourite,
:06:37. > :06:40.and she still says it's the best book I have written,
:06:41. > :06:44.and that is some 80 books later. Apart from that, it is just
:06:45. > :06:49.wonderfully lucky it Your wife's favourite book,
:06:50. > :06:53.is it your favourite book? No, the sequel of it,
:06:54. > :06:57.which is called Farm Boy, It's much shorter, it's more
:06:58. > :07:02.intense, and it's about what happens to the horse when the horse, Joey,
:07:03. > :07:06.comes back to the farm at the end It's set on the farm where live,
:07:07. > :07:14.as indeed is War Horse, but I don't know, I was more
:07:15. > :07:17.connected to the countryside then and to farming and the way of life,
:07:18. > :07:21.and so I wrote it, I think, I mean, I like War Horse,
:07:22. > :07:25.don't get me wrong, but there have But if you were to go back to it,
:07:26. > :07:32.Michael, would you change it? You know, it's not holy writ -
:07:33. > :07:38.a story is a story is a story. What's good is I think
:07:39. > :07:40.I got it almost right, and what I love about a play,
:07:41. > :07:44.and indeed I love about a film and a concert is the way it shines
:07:45. > :07:47.a new light on the story and tells it differently, and
:07:48. > :07:49.that is fine by me. I wouldn't want anyone to sort
:07:50. > :07:53.of trim it down by 20,000 words and just keep in the best bits
:07:54. > :07:55.about the horse, no. War is a recurring theme
:07:56. > :07:59.in your novels, why is that a subject that you return
:08:00. > :08:02.to time and time again? Well, writers have to write
:08:03. > :08:05.about what they care about, what they know about,
:08:06. > :08:09.what they feel they understand. All my books about war are finally
:08:10. > :08:14.about our longing for peace If there is a message,
:08:15. > :08:18.which I'am not trying to do, I'm trying to tell a story,
:08:19. > :08:21.but the message inside me is the shaking of the hand
:08:22. > :08:24.between the German soldier and the Tommy soldier in no-man's
:08:25. > :08:27.land in War Horse. It's about people coming together,
:08:28. > :08:30.and out of the ashes of war, Michael Morpurgo, it's been lovely
:08:31. > :08:52.to talk to you, thank you. A lad of dry weather in the week
:08:53. > :08:53.ahead and it