Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
I don’t remember much about my grandfather except that he was an old man with a beard and he used to sit me on his lap. He had a great tweed suit and smoked a pipe, so his beard smelt of tobacco. I remember putting my fingers in his beard and he would read me these wonderful rhymes. I just loved to hear the jingles. I think it was the music in words that attracted me to words. So the beginning of my enjoyment and love of poetry started with Edward Lear.
Your next book is A Book of Nonsense by Edward Lear.
I don’t remember much about my grandfather except that he was an old man with a beard and he used to sit me on his lap. He had a great tweed suit and smoked a pipe, so his beard smelt of tobacco. I remember putting my fingers in his beard and he would read me these wonderful rhymes, and there were those extraordinary drawings as well which I can see as I am speaking to you. They were wonderful caricatures, someone with a long nose, or someone with a beard or someone with very long legs. But most of all I just loved to hear the jingles. I think it was the music in words that attracted me to words. So the beginning of my enjoyment and love of poetry started with Edward Lear.
Read full interview
Former Children’s Laureate and award-winning author Michael Morpurgo is widely recognised as a master storyteller and has won numerous awards for his work, including the Smarties Book Prize, the Writer’s Guild Award and the Blue Peter Book Award for Private Peaceful. Michael and his wife Clare founded the charity Farms for City Children and live in Devon. His novel War Horse was made into a highly successful play by the National Theatre and is now in its second year in the West End.
