Michael Morpurgo

Sir Michael Morpurgo (born 1943) is an English children's author, born Michael Andrew Bridge in St Albans, Hertfordshire, on 5 October 1943, best known for War Horse and for serving as Children's Laureate from 2003 to 2005.

He attended boarding schools including The King's School, Canterbury, trained briefly at Sandhurst, and read English, French and philosophy at King's College London. He began telling stories to his class while teaching at a primary school in Kent, and was encouraged by his friend and neighbour Ted Hughes. On his own site he puts his output at about 130 books, nearly all written in Devon. In 1976 he and his wife Clare founded Farms for City Children, which gives urban children a week of work on a farm and now runs three farms in Devon, Gloucestershire and Wales.

War Horse (1982) was runner-up for the Whitbread award; it was adapted for the National Theatre in 2007, winning five Tony Awards on Broadway, and filmed by Steven Spielberg in 2011. Other key books are Why the Whales Came (1985), The Butterfly Lion (1996), winner of the Smarties Gold Award, Kensuke's Kingdom (1999), which won the Red House Children's Book Award in 2000, and Private Peaceful (2003), shortlisted for the Whitbread children's award and winner of the Red House award in 2004. He was appointed MBE in 1999, OBE in 2006 and knighted in 2018.

For collectors

War Horse was first published by Kaye & Ward at Kingswood in 1982, a 142-page edition recorded by Open Library; the American edition followed from Greenwillow in 1983. Firsts of the prize-winning The Butterfly Lion and Private Peaceful are the other obvious targets.