PIC: RICHARD CANON
“It’s a book that has been enormously good to me, which is strange because it had extremely unpromising beginnings.”
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t’s really wonderful to re-work stories which have stood the test of time. In a sense, what you’re doing is becoming a student in the masterclass of some wonderful storyteller. You’re acknowledging the extraordinary power of these stories because they have lasted.” An impassioned Michael Morpurgo is discussing his recently published take on ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’, the allegorical, centuriesold fable beloved of numerous readers and writers (many of whom have published their own embellished versions) including Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the Brothers Grimm and Robert Browning. “The challenge was that most children today don’t know ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’; by and large, they don’t read long narrative poems like Robert Browning’s. Another reason it hasn’t been re-told is because of the slightly dodgy nature of what the Pied Piper does [i.e. lure children away after a corrupt council renege on their promise to clear up the town]. I was pretty conscious of that, so the challenge was: how do you make it acceptable in this day and age? Can it be done? Because, in the end, if it is to remain the same story, the piper has to pipe the children away. So, as I always do, you’ve got to go back and start where the storyteller originally began.” Returning to the earliest available source text is a common practice in Morpurgo’s work as, he explains, he looks for meaning that might have been lost – or “Disneyfied” – over centuries of reinvention. With ‘The Pied Piper…’, that place, it seems, was a litter-strewn, socially divided town run by power-drunk bullies and a bent mayor – suddenly, the contemporary resonances of the piper’s tale are only too clear. “We all know in this country the gap between the rich and the poor is greater than it’s ever been. The mayor [in the story] is typical of people in power – and I’m not pointing the finger at Boris Johnson here – but you know what I’m talking about. People in power try to get away with fooling people and the moral for us today is that if you lack integrity and ethics, then it comes back to bite you – you will get your comeuppance.” It’s not the first time, to use the modern parlance, Morpurgo has “reimagined” a children’s classic, having previously tackled Aesop’s Fables, Beowulf and Hansel and Gretel amongst others. His incredible body of work, which saw him anointed as the third Children’s Laureate (2003-2005), also encompasses his own original output, imbued with simple-cum-magical natural
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Cheltenham Lit Fest Feature 973.indd 27
Michael Morpurgo (LEFT) on ‘War Horse’ settings, underdog triumphs, vivid, pastoral scenes along the dreamy Devonshire and Cornish coastline or the horrendous human horrors born on the battlefields of the Great War. “We can see Dartmoor from our window. The farm we live on is by two rivers – one of which is the Torridge. The Torridge has very famous literary associations not just through Ted [Hughes – who also lived here and will form the subject of one of Morpurgo’s two appearances at the forthcoming Cheltenham Literature Festival] but through Henry Williamson who wrote ‘Tarka the Otter’ about that river. It’s very empty and has remained very unchanged in the 30 or 40 years that we’ve been living here. So a lot of my books, including ‘War Horse’ and ‘Private Peaceful’, have their roots in this place.” And so, inevitably to ‘War Horse’, Morpurgo’s latterly successful children’s novel about the extraordinary odyssey undergone by a boy, Albert, and his beloved horse, Joey, sold to the cavalry and shipped to France to be used as a battle steed during World War I. “It’s a book that has been enormously good to me, which is strange because it had extremely unpromising beginnings. Apart from not winning the Whitbread Prize in 1982 when it was shortlisted, it just didn’t sell well. The day after I came back [from the prize ceremony] Ted Hughes rang me up and said ‘let’s go fishing’. So we went out fishing and we ended up walking in the countryside for a bit and then went to a teashop. He hadn’t mentioned the debacle from the night before but eventually leaned forward and said, ‘Oh, that prize last night Michael, it doesn’t matter. A prize is just a prize. It’s not good if you win it, it’s not good if you don’t win it. It makes no difference to the book.’ And then he said something lovely: ‘‘War Horse’ is a fine book and you will write a finer one.’ He was wonderful that way. A fantastic teacher. “Still – somehow, for 20 years, ‘War Horse’ sat on the publisher’s backlist and if it sold more than 1,500 copies a year, we’d be pleasantly surprised. The publishers, bless their hearts, kept it in print. I have no idea why. “Then out of the blue the National Theatre’s [and now Bristol Old Vic’s] Tom Morris began looking for a very specific project for a wonderful puppet company that he’d worked with at Battersea Arts Centre called the Handspring Puppet Company. He’d worked with them on a small scale and he was convinced they deserved something bigger. He’d been looking for two years for some kind of story where the animals took centre stage. He didn’t know ‘War Horse’ at all and
was recommended it by his mum, who’d read it by chance. Within two weeks, the National Theatre was committed. It took two and a half years to get it to the stage after that. Only the National Theatre – I think perhaps in the entire world – have the financial muscle and wherewithal to put together such a risky idea. Then they just got in all these amazing people and I became convinced that something wonderful might happen. By press night, they had got it together and it has simply roared away. I don’t kid myself – this is down to the genius of the people that have made it: the puppeteers, the music, the lighting, the two directors and of course the National Theatre. It’s a journey peppered with chance, risk and luck, luck, luck. “It’s the same thing with Spielberg. To put all this money and effort behind the story – that just doesn’t happen! It’s been an extraordinary journey full of people who believed in it both as a play and then as a film. Luckily for me, those people from Tom Morris to [Hollywood producer] Kathleen Kennedy and Steven Spielberg are massively talented, geniuses of storytelling.” Given Spielberg’s previous track record with war-based films, the movie, slated for a January release, has already been tipped for Oscar glory, despite no-one having seen the finished version yet. How close has Morpurgo been to it? “I don’t know what he’s done any more than anyone else. I’ve seen the trailer and I’ve been on set but that’s it. What I liked about it was that he’s very, very conscious that the book is at the heart of it. I’d be sitting behind him when he was directing and I saw he had the script there, but he also had the book. I’ve no doubt that he’s more than capable of making the most extraordinary film. I’ll see it in the next couple of months I hope, but what I do know is that the man who can make ‘ET’, ‘Jaws’, ‘Saving Private Ryan’ and’ Schindler’s List’ is the right person for this story.” An artist who revisits the original text before striding forth with his own? No wonder Morpurgo’s pleased. MICHAEL MORPURGO WILL BE AT THE CHELTENHAM LITERATURE FESTIVAL (7-16 OCT) DISCUSSING ‘WAR HORSE’ (‘FROM BOOK TO PLAY TO FILM’) ON SUN 9 OCT (4PM) AS WELL AS PERFORMING THE STORIES OF TED HUGHES AT 12NOON THE SAME DAY. MORPURGO’S RETELLING OF ‘THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN’ (WALKER, £12.99) IS OUT NOW. ‘WAR HORSE’ CONTINUES TO RUN ON STAGE IN THE WEST END AND THE SPIELBERG-DIRECTED FILM IS OUT IN JANUARY.
october 2011 // 27
9/27/2011 11:05:30 AM