Big interview: War Horse creator Sir Michael Morpurgo

Sir Michael Morpurgo is arguably best known for the book War Horse, his story about a horse, Joey, purchased by the Army to serve in the First World War and the attempts of Albert, his previous owner, to bring him safely home.

But it is another of his wartime stories that is bringing the acclaimed novelist, poet and playwright back to Yorkshire next week when he returns for a sell-out event as part of the York Festival of Ideas. Morpurgo is taking part in a live performance of The Mozart Question – his tale of friendship, truth and secrets, set against the background of the Holocaust – at York Minster.

“I’m really looking forward to being in York and performing in the Minster again with Daniel Pioro and the Storyteller’s Ensemble and reading with Victoria Moseley,” he says. “It’s the most magnificent cathedral and the atmosphere last time was wonderful. There is also the sense of history in these incredible buildings – it lifts the spirits and is a wonderful place to tell this story.”

Morpurgo’s work readily lends itself to stage and screen adaptations and this is no different. “What I like about adaptations of my stories when they are done well, as Simon Reade has done with The Mozart Question, is seeing the story in a different way, keeping the heart of the story, and the text of the original but arranging it simply for the concert hall with the most sublime and uplifting music of Handel and Bach, Mozart and Monti woven in.”

It was his children’s book War Horse that made Morpurgo a household name. First it was picked up by the National Theatre before coming to the attention of Hollywood icon Steven Spielberg who turned it into a big-screen blockbuster that brought the story to a global audience. “I’ve been very lucky to have my stories turned into plays and films and to work with some of the most original and talented directors and writers. It certainly has given my writing another dimension.

“Perhaps there is something about my writing that is bound up in performance in some way. I always speak my story down onto the page to hear how it sounds. When I am writing well I’m deep inside a story, living it as I write it and also feeling it deeply. This is when the story really begins to work. I hope that readers will become completely involved in my story as they are reading – in much the same way that people in the theatre suspend disbelief so a puppet can become a horse cantering across Dartmoor, or pulling a gun cannon.”

With The Mozart Question Morpurgo shows he’s unafraid of tackling one of the darkest chapters of human history, though the story’s genesis has more benign origins. “I was in Venice with my wife and we were out on a warm summer’s night when we saw a guitarist playing in a small square to a single audience – a boy of about five or six, sitting on a tricycle in his pyjamas, enthralled to the music,” he says.

“I thought this was the most extraordinary moment – the kind of moment that would change a child’s life hearing this glorious music in such a setting. Then, the very next day my wife and I happened upon a plaque on the side of a wall, a memorial to Jews taken from the Venetian ghetto to concentration camps during the Second World War. The story then started to weave itself in my head. Perhaps it was a way to introduce children to a dark and difficult subject, one that is so relevant today with all its connotations of prejudice, hatred and intolerance – all things that are sadly still so present today.”

Morpurgo started writing books in the 1970s while he was working as a primary school teacher in Kent, after the children in his class said they were bored by a book he was reading them. Since then he’s written more than 120 stories and while the subject matter varies, war – particularly the two world wars – is a recurring theme.

“I was a war baby, born in 1943. As I grew up, I soon learned how war had torn my world apart. I lived next to a bombsite and played in it because we were told not to. But I quickly realised that much more than buildings was destroyed by war. My parents had split up because of it.”

His uncle Pieter, who was in the RAF, was killed in 1940 and through a photograph and stories and the grief of his mother, Morpurgo felt he came to know him. “I missed him even though I’d never known him and I’ve written about him and his brother Francis in my latest book called In the Mouth of the Wolf.

“War still continues to divide people, to change them forever, and I write about it both because I want people to understand the absolute futility of war and to try to remember. Wars are still happening today and children see the effects of war and suffering all around them, on the TV and through their phones. Knowing the sensitivities of children, we have to be careful not to traumatise them when writing about the consequences of war. But nonetheless, I think we have to talk straight about these issues and not talk down to children.”

Morpurgo moved to Devon where he started the charity Farms For City Children to help poor, inner-city children enjoy a taste of rural life. It was here that he became friends with Ted Hughes, who lived on a neighbouring farm.

“One of my dearest memories of him is after I had been shortlisted for the Whitbread book award but hadn’t won. The day I returned from the award ceremony in London, we went to a cafe and were sitting down together having a cup of tea. He turned to me and said, ‘You wrote a fine book Michael. But you will write a finer one.’ It was such encouragement when I really needed it. I admired him hugely and he was so encouraging when my wife and I set up the charity. His book Poetry in the Making helped me believe I might be a storyteller and write myself.”

As a former Children’s Laureate, Morpurgo has long championed reading among children, but he says it can’t be forced. “I think the main thing as a parent is to try and pass on a passion for stories to our children. When you read a story you love to a child or that the child loves, you hold hands through an adventure, have a tiger for tea, go for a walk in the woods together with a Gruffalo. You live the story together and imagine it together. Books help us to understand and empathise with other people, we step inside other worlds and out of our own for while.”

He’s now 74, but his desire to write stories remains undimmed, though he says he never takes it for granted. “It’s not always easy and sometimes the inspiration won’t come and I doubt myself but for me, weaving a story in my head, living it and feeling it deeply and then telling it down on the page is like breathing. It’s just something that happens.”

York Festival Of Ideas – Michael Morpurgo, The Mozart Question, June 5. For more information about the festival go to yorkfestivalofideas.com