Swish of the Curtain

This May, I went to the Hay Festival. This gathering brings together many of the world’s greatest authors and illustrators to give talks about their books. I was lucky enough to see Michael Morpurgo deliver a speech about how he had invented the story of War Horse. It all started in a countryside pub. Morpurgo spied a solitary man sitting in the corner of a room and went to speak to him. The man had served in World War One, and Michael Morpurgo expressed his interest in hearing his account of The Great War. Morpurgo was told of such moving events that he decided to pass on the man’s story. He wrote the horrific tale that he had heard with such feeling that his book not only became a best-selling novel, but also a successful film and a poignant theatre production.